“Live simply so others may simply live,” Gandhi

These words have been resounding in both my mind and my heart these last few

weeks and it seems I am unable to escape them, even in my sleep.

What does this simple challenge look like to me? In my everyday life?

What am I actually willing to lose, in order that someone else might live?

When reality really breaks in, when its no longer a matter of letting go of what I don’t really need and more about sacrificing what I want? What is my response in that moment?

How do I define need? How do I decide what is necessary in order for me to live and what is just a luxury?

How much of what I think is defined by the society around me, by the media that surrounds me, by social class and expectation? By the desire to fit in, to be accepted by the world and to ultimately feel significant and successful.

I think Jesus redefined what success looked like when he made statements like:

‘The first shall be last’

and

‘In order to gain your life you must loose it’

These are not easy standards to live by, they fly in the face of all we are taught from the moment we are born.

Their challenge is very real and echoes down through eternity, still as relevant today as the day on which they were spoken.

They were not suggestions for ‘how to live a better life.’ They were not just cultural to the time and therefore irrelevant for us today.  They are statements of a truth that is unchanging and words that will remain and stand the test of time.

If we are totally honest with ourselves, it really isn’t a challenge for most of us to give away what we don’t really need. To sacrifice for others out of our own abundance and it can be so easy to do that, to give from our excess and then to decide that we have done our bit for mankind.

But what about when the need is for us to take it further than that? To give to those in need out of our own lack. To give away that which we are not sure we can really afford. To have to trust for ourselves in providing for someone else. What happens then?

Now I am not calling for us all to make a vow of poverty and to own nothing, spend nothing and want for nothing.

I understand that we have a loving heavenly Father, who is in the business of blessing. That He is true to His word when He says, ‘ I have come to give you life and life in abundance.’  I’m just not convinced that the ‘abundance’ He is talking about is a material one.

What if that abundance means something altogether other, than what we might have thought?

What if true freedom and happiness comes not from living with possessions, but living free from them?

Jesus said many radical things, that can make us feel uncomfortable even in the midst of our most spiritual moments.

Matthew 6:25

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Challenging? Absolutely ……

But in His great kindness He then goes on to give us the key in how to live this out:

V33 But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

So I choose to allow these words to penetrate my heart once again today and to dare to ask the question, in this hour, in this time where so many are in need and the number is increasing each day…

What am I actually willing to give? What price am I willing to pay? And where is He calling me to sacrifice and lay my life down once again on behalf of Him and of others?