Live more living with less

Article about the spirituality of simplicity:

Brad DeLong puts this economic crisis into perspective. Why is a lower standard of living unimaginable for us for a while? Why is it essential that income keeps rising? What can't we do more with less?

...everybody I know finds it very difficult to imagine how people can survive on less than one-third of what they spend—never mind that all of our pre-industrial ancestors did so all the time. There is a point at which we say "enough!" to more oat porridge. But all evidence suggests Keynes was wrong: We are simply not built to ever say "enough!" to stuff in general.[...]

Our goods are not only plentiful but cheap. I am a book addict. Yet even I am fighting hard to spend as great a share of my income on books as Adam Smith did in his day. Back on March 9, 1776 Adam Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations went on sale for the price of 1.8 pounds sterling at a time when the median family made perhaps 30 pounds a year. That one book (admittedly a big book and an expensive one) cost six percent of the median family's annual income. In the United States today, median family income is $50,000 a year and Smith's Wealth of Nations costs $7.95 at Amazon (in the Bantam Classics edition). The 18th Century British family could buy 17 copies of the Wealth of Nations out of its annual income. The American family in 2009 can buy 6,000 copies: a multiplication factor of 350.

Books are not an exceptional category. 

This is why our problem is not just economic; it's spiritual. We have mistaken consuming for living.

New life

Our daughter was born on Monday and it was one of the most worshipful, intense, and humbling experiences of our lives. Being part of the labor and delivery with Erica has taken our marriage to another level...starting with the profound respect I have for what she went through. And, of course, having this new little girl in our lives, Saylor Grace Smith, stirs in me a joy I was honestly skeptical would be real.

I've reflected a lot on childbirth since we learned we were pregnant and the experience -- the intensity of the pain and the joy -- blew away all of my expectations. God could have chosen any means to bring children into the world and He chose the process of conception, pregnancy, and birth. The deep spiritual parallels of each stage are incredible and humbling. Man nor woman able to bring new life on their own. God's long, patient work of knitting together new life. And the juxtaposition of maybe the greatest pain imaginable and the greatest joy.

Childbirth may be the only worldly pain with such promise. Most pain is a warning. Labor is full of hope. I couldn't get this parallel with life out of my head during Erica's labor. That pain, that struggle was God's illustration of life in the flesh...followed by the indescribable joy of new life given to us by our Creator and Redeemer.

As I look at Saylor Grace, I'm humbled by all she represents. Christ, in speaking to the disciples about His imminent crucifixion, said:

"You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you." John 16:20-22

And Paul uses childbirth to illustrate the struggle underway by all of creation:

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us...For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now...as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved." Romans 8:18, 22-24

And in the song Yahweh, U2 sings:

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn

Still waiting for the dawn, the sun is coming up
The sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean

Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Saylor's birth was a struggle and there were certainly times we didn't think we'd get through it. But it was on that dark canvas God began to reveal His light. The past 9 months and especially on Monday, we sang the verses "Still I’m waiting for the dawn...Yahweh, tell me now, why the dark before the dawn?" And then she came.

I can't take my eyes off this little girl. I love kissing her chubby cheeks. I've never touched anything as soft as her skin. I'm completely in love. And this love is just a drop in the ocean?

Praise God for this life of labor and the hope it brings. Praise our Father for the promise of adoption. Praise Him for glimpses into a joy so deep and profound. "No one will take your joy from you." Praise God.