Simplicity

“The only simplicity to be trusted is the simplicity found on the far side of complexity.”                                                                                                   - Alfred Whitehead

It occurs to me that when I was 3, life was pretty simple.  You just live.  I didn’t need much to be happy, and I was blissfully ignorant of most everything.  But as I got older I found that life got more and more complex.  Relationships grew beyond immediate family to friends (and some of their families), wife (and her family) children (and their friends).  Co-workers, business acquaintances and their spouses.  Eventually I imagine the kids’ spouses, their kids and their kids friends.  The world itself grew much more complex as I became aware of other nations, cultures, languages, different ideas and the ever increasing exponential curve of technology.  In fact, the technologies I used to write this and you’re using to read it didn’t even exist when I was a teenager (word processing software, laptops, internet, blogs, etc).

Last night in our Bible study small group we were praying for each other, and a couple of our group members were noting that as they grew older they could do less and less, and were remarking on how difficult it is just to get around.  Their world it seems is less complex, not by choice so much as circumstance.  Age alone demands of them that mobility and functionality be let go.  So gifts of helps have to be replaced with the simplicity of prayer.  The gift of giving is replaced by the gift of needing. 

On the far side of life itself is, for those who know Christ as savior, eternal life in glory.  A simple life of just being with God.  Those around me are seeing the value and attractiveness of that seem to increase even as capabilities decrease.  But how much better off we could be if we would just grasp that idea now, in the midst of the complexity.  Perhaps we can’t stop everything or ignore our complex relationships, work and the new technologies being forced upon us.  But we can always make time (at least a bit of time) for the refreshment of just being with God.   A quiet time of prayer, reading His Word and just enjoying His presence. 

Mark 6:30-31 says, “The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught.  Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

Yes.  Let’s do that.