More Thoughts on Simple Living

We try to honor Sunday worship by doing as little as possible and using it as a day of rest and worship as we believe God intended. That is why there are no posts on my blog anymore on Sundays. In fact, we have chosen to not even turn the computer on during the Lord's day. It is so easy to get caught up reading, searching, working, that the temptation is just too great and we feel it is more honoring to just keep it off during this time, rather than losing the focus of what God intended this day to be. We often find ourselves in different parts of the great room looking at books we don't get to peruse other days of the week. Everyone in the family enjoys this! We are definitely a book family! I happened to pick up a book about child training that I hadn't read in a while an came across this paragraph. The quote is from Jacob Abbott and well worth meditating on for a while. The following material was written back in the 1800's.
"If your aim is happiness, reduce your style of living and your responsibilities of business to such a point that you shall easily be able to reach it. Do this, I say, at all costs. If you cannot have money enough for your purposes, in a house with two rooms, take a house with one. For there is such a thing as happiness in a single room, with plain furniture and simple fare (food); but there is no such thing as happiness, with responsibilities which cannot be met and debts increasing, without any prospect of their discharge. If your object is power, the credit of belonging to good society, or the most rapid accumulation of property, and you are willing to sacrifice happiness for it, I might perhaps give you different advice. But if your object is happiness, then this is the only way."
What a great thought! It is so easy to look at the things others have...the newest this or that...to compare what we have with them...but does that really matter in the end? There are not too many people on their deathbeds wishing they had a little more time to get the latest gadget...but rather realizing that all that materialism kept them from the things that were most important. So, if you decide to downsize, reorganize, simplify...whatever you wish to call it...do so with the purpose that your time and monies that you save taking care of all those things will now be spent on a more eternal value.