It seems to me, from recent conversations that I have had, that many people are wrestling with two competing desires as we move towards the autumn and the new program year. On the one hand, that’s a strong desire to get back into a routine and be involved in many of the activities and aspects of life that have fallen away over the past two years. On the other hand, there is a sense of continued exhaustion and anxiety as the world seems to be growing ever more topsy-turvy. In this vein, there’s a sense of needing to simplify life, get back to basics and only do what is most meaningful and important. The two impulses seem to be in conflict, as one is about doing more and the other is about doing less. Yet I would suggest that both strands are really asking the same fundamental question: what is really meaningful in my life, and how do I put my focus on it?
September is always a time of high energy. It is a time of getting back to the normal rhythm of the year and starting up new activities, sports, special events, and more. We have plenty of that happening at St. Matthew this month. We will be celebrating God’s Work Our Hands Sunday, launching a new Sunday morning schedule with a newly re-formatted Sunday School/Christian Formation time, having a congregational picnic to celebrate St. Matthew Day, and seeking to begin living into our new theme, “Live the Love.” That a great deal of new things with new energy! Yet in this move to so many new things, can we also find a way to also live into a sense of simplicity that gives these many events meaning? Can we see these events not as splashy new things to do, but as ways of honing in on the importance of God speaking into our lives and giving them meaning? Special events and new schedules on their own are just more things to do, and so end up competing with the many other demands that drown our time in busyness. If, instead, we see them as touchstones to give us direction in making sense of what is important and what is not, they become a path towards simplifying and focusing our lives around the life-giving presence of God with us.
The Christian vision of simplicity is, at its heart, a call to live humanly. It is a reminder that we have limits, and that when we live within those limits our lives feel more fulfilling than when we continually push beyond the limits in a continual search to do more and be more. Jesus was continually urging those he encountered to pare down to what they really need. When we recognize how much more we have when we try to be and do less, we are more capable of noticing the wonderful gifts of God we have in our lives, and our lives become filled with gratitude.
As we embark on these new ventures that await us this September, let us see them as a time to hear anew the message that in God we have more than enough; in God our cup overflows. We need not fill our time with every other thing we possibly can. Let us have a simple September where we discover anew delight in the Lord.