Dave and I were visiting our son Andy where he coaches and lives in Arkansas during the baseball season. The team has a day off every Monday, and when they are home, the staff get together at the rented home of Nellie, one of the coaches. Last Monday, we were invited.
The photo shows what greeted us when we arrived. All of these rudimentary gadgets had a purpose to put on a spread that rivals any barbecue restaurant we have ever visited. Nellie cooked enough ribs, port roast, chicken wings and brats to feed the entire team, each meat with his secret spices and perfectly timed attention. He smiled the entire time and told me that he loves, loves, loves grilling.
No one was in a hurry, and because the grill was so small, the food was spread out over several hours. Occasionally the score of the Royals’ game was checked, or a phone call from home needed answered, but mostly, we just visited. The young staff loved talking to Dave about his time in baseball 100 years ago and how things have changed.
At the same time, my granddaughter Mo was in Guatemala with her church group. They had gone there to help with a pastor’s convention, but she fell in love with the Shead family who are missionaries there. The eight children are home-schooled and then come up with ideas to create activities.
“I think I’m going to build a tree fort,” said the eleven-year-old girl. “Want to help?” For the rest of the afternoon, Mo and her new friend built another fort. (They already had two.) The children hang together outside and are joined occasionally by the school children on recess who come to their yard to play. There are no cell phones or iPad or Xboxes. The kids are encouraged to use their imagination. They have learned Spanish as well as English and look forward to their Bible study time with their parents. Mo told me that she loved hanging with this family who didn’t need “things” to make them happy.
In both Nellie and Mo’s cases, simplicity was key. A dying art. In today’s culture, too many of us aren’t blessed; we are stressed. We forget what it is like to do without. Instead, we busy our time being frustrated about what we aren’t getting done. Proverbs 14:30 (NIV) says this: “A heart at peace gives life to the body.” Pastor/author John Ortberg adds to that proverb. “Sometimes, the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap.”
If you’ve ever stressed about stress, you and I have that in common. In the noisy clamor of life, we flit from one thing to another and don’t give ourselves permission to just do nothing. Some of us are too busy to pray, the one thing we need to do that offers peace. Maybe we crave things we neither need nor enjoy, and we buy things just to “keep up with the Jones’s.” Of course, the Jones’s are doing the same, so we and the Jones’s all spend our days spinning on our competitive hamster wheels, getting nowhere.
It’s no wonder God made his message a simple one. We are all sinners. Christ died and was resurrected for our sins. If we make him our Lord and Savior, we spend eternity in Heaven. If simplicity is good enough for God, it should be good enough for us.