The Soul of Slow Living

Remember the free and easy days of childhood? When you’d lose yourself fully in whatever experience you were currently having?

Whether it was a greasy slice of pizza an afternoon nap or a pretend but complex game with the neighborhood kids, you were all in. Time seemed to pass just perfectly. As if there were juuuust enough hours in the day and life was exactly as long as it needed to be. 

How did we get so far from our own selves? Our true selves? The feeling of being fearfully and wonderfully made? 
For me, I got lost in the clutter, the busyness of modern life in our society. The idols of work, money, consumption and health. The endless opportunity for more.

The mistake I made was looking to creation for my security (food, outward appearances, a nice home, plenty of savings) rather than to The Creator. 

“Now it is a rule of nature that the inward affects the outward, as light shines from the centre of the lantern through the glass: when, therefore, the truth is kindled within, its brightness soon beams forth in the outward life and conversation. It is said that the food of certain worms colours the cocoons of silk which they spin: and just so the nutriment upon which a man’s inward nature lives gives a tinge to every word and deed proceeding from him. To walk in the truth, imports a life of integrity, holiness, faithfulness, and simplicity–the natural product of those principles of truth which the gospel teaches, and which the Spirit of God enables us to receive.” 

—Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening November 28th

Here’s my opinion; there is no slow and simple life apart from Jesus.

 
If your soul does not have a place to rest, then a slow and simple lifestyle will only become yet another thing to do and feel good about yourself doing, instead of true and total contentment in just being. 

²⁶ Look at the birds in the sky! They don’t plant or harvest. They don’t even store grain in barns. Yet your Father in heaven takes care of them. Aren’t you worth much more than birds?

²⁷ Can worry make you live longer? ²⁸ Why worry about clothes? Look how the wild flowers grow. They don’t work hard to make their clothes. ²⁹  But I tell you that Solomon with all his wealth wasn’t as well clothed as one of them. ³⁰ God gives such beauty to everything that grows in the fields, even though it is here today and thrown into a fire tomorrow. God will surely do even more for you!

Matthew 6:26-30 Contemporary English Version

 
I have tried to do lots of things to make my life better but true life only comes from the wellspring of Jesus’ love and neverending grace healing a hard, callused heart and making it beat fully alive again.

There is no striving. 
You can rest.  

Thank you Jesus for this slow and simple life.