Is There Any Way to Simplify Life?

 

Thank you Virginia Sharp Franz for the beautiful bluebird

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.   Isaiah 55:8-9 (KJV)

Life is difficult.  Life is complicated.  I know…colossal understatement.  So many important things, essential things, exhaust my time and energy.  Family, work, home, property, friends—vie for my attention. I have tools--calendars and agendas—to help me sort it all out; I can’t keep up with them either.  Technology has sped up every facet of our lives, and rather than simplify mine, it has made it exponentially more overcharged.  When my teenager has to give me a tutorial on how to use a phone, I realize I've fallen behind the learning curve.

Is there any way to simplify my life?

I am finite.  God is infinite.  I know He is my strength.  There is so much I can’t understand and will never figure out.  I know I need God.

It simplifies my life—more than anything else I can think of—to simply listen to God.  Study and know God’s Word.  Look to Him for the guidance I need.  Trust Him to care for all of my needs.  Pray to Him seeking His guidance, mercies, and peace.  Obey Him.

I’d rather be an obedient child, a humble sheep in His pasture, than to try to manage it all on my own.  I trust my Father God to take care of me and lead me in the way that I should go.  I’m grateful to be a sheep in His pasture.  Life is simplified for me when I ask What would Jesus Do? like Charles Monroe Sheidon suggested in In His Steps.

Thy testimonies also are my delight and my counselors.  Psalm 119:24

Much of the frustrations I’ve experienced in life have come from assuming my common sense and calculations would show the way, rather than looking to God and trusting His infinite wisdom to show me the way.  I need to cooperate with God on everything, and learning that path hasn't necessarily been easy.  I have second-guessed God.  I dare say you have too.  I have learned that when I make a decision, make it with God.  I say, I have learned, but in realitiy, it's a moment by moment choice to look to God.

When I call to Him and listen, I want to hear—This is the way walk ye in it. (Isaiah 30:21b)

Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end.  Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law

and obey it with all my heart. Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart toward your statutes.  Psalm 119:33-36a (NIV)

Florida sunshine courtesy of Google prints