Driving in this morning I noticed the following statement on a church billboard - "Live simply. Love deeply. Pursue God." Usually I'm not a big fan of the sayings that get put up on church billboards. They often come across as cheesy and outdated. (Only outdone by the overabundance of bad bumper stickers. Seriously, who buys these? There may be a reason why when you see a bumper sticker on a car there is usually about 15 others on that car as well. The market for who actually places these on their cars is a pretty limited group in my opinion. Sorry for that tangent rant. I don't like poor marketing or lack of creativity.) Three simple statements that if I could accomplish them would change my life in a radical way.
Live simply. Somehow I manage to make my life more complicated than it needs to be most of the time. Wants that drive me to add clutter to my life. Wasting time, money and energy on things that don't matter. If each day I set out to live simply that day, how different would my day look?
Love deeply. Not be nice, not like those who can help me, but truly love others. (You can still be nice and love deeply, but they aren't the same thing.) Do I put others ahead of myself, trying to live selflessly? Does my love for others alter the way I speak, the way I spend my time, what breaks my heart? Love is a word that gets thrown around a lot - I love that car, I love my dog, I love this food, I love doing ______. I don't think this is the type of love that we are suppose to have. A love that goes so deep that we are moved to act on it. A love that is focused outwardly and not on what we want. I think a lot of the times we are afraid to love deeply because it might mean that we get hurt when it isn't returned in the way we would like. I don't think loving deeply looks for anything in return though. We love because we simply want the best for others.
Pursue God. Pursue is a strong word. To me it means to chase after something. It isn't a casual, when time allows type of thing. It is intentional and with purpose. We seem more content to accidentally bump into God than to pursue him. Kind of like when we run into a friend we haven't seen in a long time. Pursuing a relationship usually means that you make an effort to be around that person. You create time to be around them, you want to hear about their lives, you care about what they care about. Shouldn't a pursuit of God look similar to that?
So for today I choose to live simply, love deeply and pursue God.
1 comment:
Yes. Traditionally not a church billboard fan, but I love that. If there were one out of the 3 that were out of balance for me, it would be to live simply. I don't really live that simply. I don't mean that in the area of finances or things, although that's pretty relative. I'm better today in the area of not complicating my life with stuff, than I ever have been (taking healthy steps out of bad past in this area). But I complicate my life with worry and anxiety about things that I can't control. As a consequence, when I struggle with one, then all of a sudden the other two are hard to get to. That's kind of ironic isn't it?
Post a Comment