Day 4213 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

2 Corinthians 9:8 NIV

A life of suffice

It’s a simpler life. A calmer, quieter life. A life lived without worry over want or win. A mind made upon making the most of whatever situation or circumstance you’re in. A heart not quite so heavily laden by all the things that everyone else is looking for, longing for. A soul satisfied with the simplicity of what is simply a simpler life. Sadly it’s arguably the way of life that I don’t know if any of us can or will ever know. I believe it to be the life we were created to know, the life we were made for. But we’ve long since lost the innocence which makes it so amazing.

Lost it to looking for the ever-more that we’re all still down here looking for.

And the strange part to me is that we just keep looking. No matter what we find, no matter how much we have, no matter how many days go good nor how many don’t go that bad, we still all awake unto each and every day with plans already firmly in place to sprint right back unto the race to what is first place in what we hope to soon become lives lived the way we want them to be lived as is always defined by all we hope to find within them.

But the problem is that our wants leave us as victims of everything from ego to gluttony as the reality is that desire knows no limit. Want doesn’t understand what good enough is. Pleasure sees no point or purpose waiting to be proven in anything other than the next prize for which our eyes are looking and our hearts are longing. Even satisfaction has seemingly lost its traction as anymore it seems only an ideal that knows nothing of being ever satisfied.

I don’t even think we know what it is to be satisfied.

Because satisfaction is truly nothing more than the acceptance of and appreciation for the fulfillment of something, be it needs or desires or ideas or whatever. It’s an endpoint. It’s a finish line. It’s the ability of the mind to take measure of all that is and, in that all, find contentment. Yes, satisfaction is being content with the content of the current. And contentment knows nothing of want as it wants nothing of more as it sees no need for anything more.

Contentment is just satisfied with whatever is whatever it is.

We don’t know anything about that, do we? Truly, when’s the last time that we looked upon anything in life and said it was good? That it was finished? That it was complete and our joy completed because of it? When is the last time that we felt not the need to add on, to want more, to imagine something even better than the very sum of whatever it was that we already had?

Our minds don’t work like that.

Perhaps it’s because of all the commercials we see. Maybe it’s a product of all this thinking about me that we’re all inspired to try all the time. It could be a symptom of selfishness having become basically our cultural pastime. Or maybe it’s just yet one more outcome of what is the same fall that’s fallen us all. But whatever the case and whoever’s to blame, the sad truth is that we honestly don’t seem a people who’ve any foggy idea as to what sufficient is.

Rather we’re too worried about whatever it is that we’ve come to think success is to stop and see how simple a life should be.

Indeed, when’s even the last day that you didn’t do whatever has become normal to you? And honestly, what is normal to you? What are those things that you seem to do or feel the need to all the time? What does your normal day look like? What do the hours of your life find you doing with them? Are any of them spent in want? In worry? In wish? In some hurry to worry over all you want and wish to either find or flee from?

When is the last time that you didn’t feel that unshakable need to move either toward something or from something else?

Truth is that we know nothing of such a static and stationary existence. Instead we’re all always rushing about heaping up wealth and want for always only more. That is what our lives here have become. It’s all just us doing anything we can under the sun trying to find always more of all the more that’s down here with us. We know nothing of contentment. Rather there’s always something else we want or think we need.

Seriously, we are so ensnared in greed that it’s amazing we ever feel happy or thankful for anything.

But my wonder is whether we really do.

Do we even know what happiness is or the feel of gratitude?

And, well, how can we think we do whenever all we do is only done for something else? How can we even pretend to understand the ideal that is being thankful whenever we’re always found moving from one ideal or idol unto the next?

It’s almost as if we actually enjoy the stress.

Because, well, we all seem far more stressed than we are satisfied. We seem vastly more worried than we are willing to rest. We spend exceedingly more days wandering through want than we do wading in where we already are and all we have already. In fact I don’t know that we can actually do such a thing. I don’t know that we could go an hour without that power of desire asking us to do something else seeking after something more.

I don’t think we have it in us.

No, I think we lost that too along way to whatever this is that we’ve insisted our lives become.

And sure, they’re vastly more filled because of it. Both our minds and our mansions are all but bursting at the seams thanks to all the things with which we allow them filled or hope to soon. Indeed, we are a people constantly on the move seeking something else usually found somewhere else by they are someone else who, for whatever reason, we’ve come to believe is living a better life than we are at the moment.

There’s always something better, ain’t there?

Always something bigger or brighter or elsewise able to help us believe that we too would be better and bigger and brighter if only we could find it, afford it, fit it in our cars and manage to get it home so that we could sit in our chairs for a few minutes, marvel at this new magnificence, and then move on yet again.

Friends, aren’t we tired yet?

Hasn’t yet the constant rushing of minds always wanting gotten us worn out? Has not life as we live it become so unenjoyable that we know not anymore what enjoyment even is? Speaking for me personally, it’s been so long since I was happy with anything that I don’t know if I know what happiness is. I’m pretty sure I felt it back when I was a kid. I assume I’ve felt it at least a few times over all these years since then.

But it’s sadly become something always so faint and fading that I think I’ve all but given up on trying to find it.

Too busy trying to find all this other stuff.

Because, again, that’s what life here has become. It’s this insatiable hunt for our to have something other than whatever we already do. Every day our minds are given to peruse endless pages filled with flashing ads that make us mad or sad or glad in regard to something we don’t have, do need, have found and forgot all about. Truly, we’ve found ourselves living inside such an excess that we exist as but unpaid curators of these little museums of all that we think matters most.

A museum of every hope we’ve ever had, all of them placed in frames or under smudge-proof glass to keep them safe so that we can show them off to anyone who ever asks what it is that we have to show for whatever it is that is this direction that our lives continue to go.

Only nobody ever asks because we’re all so busy working away on tracking down more of our own wants that we haven’t the time to even acknowledge that there’s anyone around us anymore.

Seriously, next time that you go to the store take stock of how many people there seem entirely oblivious to everyone around them.

It’s truly heartbreaking what’s happened to life. And that’s because we live it always waiting in line for our chance to have something else. We line up for lunch thrown through drive-thru windows. We line up at registers that fill always fuller with our funds given freely for things that we think we need. We line up at our tv’s every night or at the stream of blue light pouring from our laptops trying to make sure we don’t fall behind our being in the know.

I don’t want to know any more anymore.

I just want to know what is that life in which God’s will and Word and Way are allowed to suffice. I want to experience that life that finds me unworried about what I want and what I like and what I hope to find or wish rather to avoid. I want to know if there’s a life that doesn’t ask my mind to always wrap around something else.

I want to know if there’s a life that can be so simple as to just be satisfied.

I want to know what it’s like to not want anything else. I want to know how it feels to look at all I have and be content with the plenty that I know that it is. I want what is this idea that I’ve had in mind in which all I care to for the rest of forever find is only food, water, a roof over my head and a heart so filled with hope that everything that ever comes my way can finally be seen as the undeserved blessing that it is.

I want to be able to witness for myself the bounty that is God’s blessings being poured endlessly into a life that has finally found the ending of my wanting anything else.

Yes, I want to spend out the rest of my days doing the little things that He put me here to do, enjoying the little things that He gives me daily to help me to do all He’s put me here to, and to simply allow such simplicity to suffice. In fact, I’ve been praying for months now that He would help me to find that still distant line over which still awaits what is the simple life.

Because I’m tired of the over complication. I’m tired of the endless craving. I’m sick of spending time on ebay hunting down another self-perceived treasure that I don’t need. I’m tired of feeling like I have to do one more job that takes another hour away from spending said time with my family just so that I can afford that one more thing that I can live without.

I just want to wake up every day, look at my life so filled with everything He’s given me and find the ability, the audacity to agree with Him and say that it is good. I want to be good with what I have, where I am, who I am trying to become and where all of this hopefully goes from here.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

I just want to see if there exists that kind of life in which I’m simply alright. Not great. Not suffering. Not rich. Neither poor.

Just a life lived as a man here to do a few simple works, all of which I do unto the glory of God alone, from which I can simply trust that, in working for Him and toward Him, so too then shall from Him continue to come all that I need to get the job done.

But all of that sounds so often so far away that I don’t know if I can find it. Don’t even know if it exists. And that because still each and every day feels always already spent upon the assumption of there being a bigger or better content that keeps me from being content.

How do we break that cycle we’re in when we’ve been in it for 10, 20, 40 years?

Well, truth is that even at 38 I’m sadly just now even seemingly interested in trying to figure it out, and, having just recently started trying, the best that I can offer is seemingly found in the power of ‘no’.

Indeed, I believe that peace, at least so much of it as we can ever hope to find in this place, I believe that peace is only to be seen whenever we start saying no. No thanks, don’t need it. No thank you, not interested. Sorry but no, I can’t go. Don’t want to go. Not my kind of thing. I already have enough. I’m good with what I have, where I am, who I am. I’d rather spend my time, my money, my effort, my attention upon just being good with the sum of all that already is.

And I believe this because this world daily inspires us to say yes. To want more. To see something and crave it so deeply that we allow ourselves no rest until we have it.

And I’ve done that. I’ve done that a lot and, yeah, I’ve ended up having a lot because of it.

But here’s the thing that you will never see in any commercial or painted on a billboard on the side of the highway:

Nothing in this life can fill our lives.

Nothing that money can buy can be worth the time we had to spend to make the money with which to buy it. Nothing that can be made by human hands is worth being desired by human hearts.

In fact, all of our heart’s endless desiring is why the world’s falling apart.

It’s why we so often feel as if we’re falling apart. It’s because we’ve lost the art of just being thankful for what we already have. We’ve lost the ability to look at all that God’s given us, and continues giving, and see in the sum of it more than plenty. We have lost our understanding of the vast difference between want and need and we’re wasting our lives because of it. We’re ruining our lives because of it.

Why?

Because we’re convinced that our lives aren’t good, aren’t full, aren’t able to measure up to whatever it is that we think is enough.

Friends, we don’t know anything of enough. Rather, to us, there’s always something more to want. There’s always something else we need. Always some list of all these things that we have to get done.

Why?

God’s given us one job and supplies everything we need to get it done.

Why does all of this other stuff continue to matter? Does anything else we ever do really feel as if it makes a difference? Is there anything at all that can possibly matter more, mean more than our telling everyone about Jesus and how He freed us to live what are lives in which we find that we need nothing? Can you imagine how much less stress, less worry, less want we’d feel were we to just be happy with the simplicity of a life that didn’t feel as if it needed anything else?

What could we do with all that extra time if we weren’t working overtime trying to find some way to afford one more thing that we could live without?

Might we actually live? Make some memories? Share some laughs? Tell some stories? Play a game with our kids? Take our wives on a date? Be able to enjoy a slow dance or watch the firebugs float through the evening wind?

What all do we continue to miss simply because we don’t know what sufficient is?

Friends, I am convinced that life doesn’t have to be like this. That we don’t have to do all this that we do, running ourselves ragged and driving ourselves crazy trying to find some way to have everything that we continue to be so easily convinced that we need.

For the concept of a need is a truly simple thing. We need such things as food and water and shelter. And, seeing as how we have all of these, what more do we need that we literally can’t live without?

And, well, what all do we miss or fail to be thankful for in what are these lives in which we always want something more?

What will something more give us that we don’t already have?

What will something more cause us to miss realizing we already have?

The truth is that we have no idea how truly blessed we really are. We’ve managed to become a people who are able to overlook everything as we look always for something else. Why? What else is there that we could ever hope to find or hope to feel that would prove more meaningful than seeing all the goodness of God we’re drowning in and then getting to tell everyone else about it?

Indeed, one day we’re all going to look up and see just how hard we’ve made this thing called life and how much easier it all should have been. I just pray that that day is today because we’re running out of time to finally find the ability to just be thankful for the fact that we’re alive and that He who gave us this life also gives us all we need to get through every day we spend living it.

And if we never learn to appreciate all that He is and all that He does, all because we’re always looking elsewhere for something else, then odds are we’ll never know Him like we should.

Because He’s not there to give us more than we need. He’s there giving us all that we need so that we can hopefully come to see that we need nothing more.

And that’s a very big difference.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold