iving a Life of Less
This article is courtesy of ParentLife.
I love giving away books. Usually people enjoy receiving them as much as I enjoy giving them away. However, that changed when I wrote a book on downsizing life. Friends and family members alike took one look at the cover and shot back, “So what are you trying to tell me?”
Something as simple as the words Living with Less on a book cover touches a nerve because most people struggle with the never-ending battle between living in a culture of accumulation while serving a Lord who says to be content with what you have. Then there is the constant time crunch as you try to squeeze more activity into an ever-tighter schedule while also leaving time for God and your family. Living a life of less sounds like a nice ideal, but you probably wonder if it can ever be found in the mad dash of your daily routine.
Downsizing your life is a process that never really comes to an end. I have found that the key is not just choosing to buy a used car instead of taking on new car payments. Instead, living with less begins with a shift in the way you see yourself and your world — shifts that go to the heart of why you live the way you do.
Live With an Eternal Perspective
God made you for eternity, but you live in a world that is temporary. This means that the world of time can never deliver that for which your soul most longs. You want happiness, yet you live in a world filled with suffering and sorrow. You long for significance, yet you live in a culture where the accomplishments of the greatest heroes are forgotten soon after they die. You want your life to matter, yet all the pursuits that appear so large in this world of time are ultimately meaningless. The only way to find what you most want out of life is to shift your focus from the temporary to the eternal.
Moving from time to eternity not only changes your perspective on the stuff that eventually ends up in a yard sale or on eBay®; it changes your perspective on yourself. Living in the temporary world skews your perspective from the moment you first become self-aware. The problem is pride. Or more to the point, the problem is self-centeredness. Every person wrestles with the desire to place himself at the center of his own personal universe.
When you shift your gaze from the world of time to the realm in which the Lord of the universe reigns, you can see yourself for who you truly are. You are nothing more than a frail creature of dust, while God is the almighty, sovereign Creator. What other choice do you have but to fall on your knees and humble yourself before Him? Only then will you begin to move from the world of the temporary to the world that holds all you really want in life. Simply put, living a life of less begins with choosing less of yourself.
Redefine Success
My life and the lives of my children are markedly different because of the priorities a man I never met instilled in his children. My father’s father died before my parents ever met, yet his thumbprints are all over my soul. This Oklahoma dirt farmer with an eighth-grade education who struggled to survive during the Dust Bowl had a dream for his six children. He wanted them to go to college. This was before the days of Pell Grants and federally subsidized student loans. Even so, the dream took hold and is now touching the third and fourth generation.
Real success means living your life in such a way that it lasts longer than you do through the influence you exert on future generations. It has nothing to do with the size of your house and everything to do with the characters that are shaped within your home. Once you define success in these terms, the big questions about downsizing your life take care of themselves. You will no longer ask what size television you should buy. You will be too busy asking how you can maximize your influence on your child during this short window of time God has given you with her.
Time Is a Treasure
Many people treat life as though they have an unlimited amount of time at their disposal. If you do not get around to those important things you need to do today, it is no big deal. You can get to them tomorrow or the day after that or eventually. However, when you understand that you have been given a limited amount of time on this planet and that every moment is a treasure you can waste or spend but not save, everything changes. The Bible says to make the most of every opportunity time presents to you (Ephesians 5:16). These are not just religious words but a principle that must guide your life.
You need to get up every day and find the best way to invest this treasure of time so that it yields the maximum results. I never realized how precious this treasure was or how fast it slipped away until my children started school. One day my wife and I turned around and two of our daughters had moved to college. The last daughter will join them in just a couple of years. No one has all of the time in the world. Your supply is very short. The question you face is whether or not you will use it wisely.
These three principles are far from exhaustive. Living a life of less in order to have more of what you truly want out of life is a process that takes a lifetime to complete. The countercultural choices this lifestyle demands do not always make life easier. Far from it. Anything worth doing always comes at a high price. Yet, in the end, you will find the price worth paying.
Mark Tabb is the author of 13 books including Living with Less: The Upside of Downsizing Your Life and The Unusual Suspect with Stephen Baldwin. Mark and his family live in Indiana with their two dachshunds.
No comments:
Post a Comment