Simplifying Your Life - What Matters Most

In his book, “How can everything be alright, when everything is all Wrong?” Lewis Smedes shares these thoughts on filling your squares with what matters most.

I bought a brand-new date book yesterday, the kind I use every year— spiral-bound, black imitation leather covers wrapped around pages and pages of blank boxes. Every square has a number to tell me which day of the month I’m in at the moment. Every square is a frame for one episode of my life. Before I’m through with the book, I will fill the squares with classes I teach, people with whom I ate lunch, everlasting committee meetings I sit through, and these are only the things I cannot afford to forget. I fill the squares too with things I do not write down to remember: thousands of cups of coffee, some lovemaking, some praying, and, I hope, gestures of help to my neighbors. Whatever I do, it has to fit inside one of those squares on my date book. I live one square at a time. The four lines that make up the box are the walls of time that organize my life. Each box has an invisible door that leads to the next square. As if by a silent stroke, the door opens and I am pulled through, as if by a magnet, sucked into the next square in line. There I will again fill the time frame that seals me—fill it with my busy-ness just as I did the square before. As I get older, the squares seem to get smaller. One day I will walk into a square that has no door. There will be no mysterious opening and no walking into an adjoining square. One of those squares will be terminal. I do not know which square it will be."

The challenge to each of us it to fill our squares wisely. John Ortberg states that each of us should prioritize these four areas in our lives.

1. God
2. People
3. Calling
4. Joy

Simple living means filling our squares with what matters most.

Book Review - Rest of God by Mark Buchanan

I started this book about a year ago. I thought it was an interesting concept and began to slowly work through it. I would read other books and then come back to it. My reading the book is kind of an allegory to the point of the book. Buchanan feels that we need to develop a Sabbath principle in our lives, a day focused for Worship and rest. Society has placed us on a treadmill of activity and we work and leisure ourselves to the point of exhaustion. As I read the book I found myself thinking this is an important Biblical concept and then I would get drawn to something else. I've come to realize, as Buchanan has, that I am not a machine made for constant activity. I am a human being with limits. Not only do I have limits, God seems to have put within me a default setting that needs Sabbath. I am not complete with out it.

I found the book a little slow at times, Buchanan's long description of things a little tedious, but in the end I found myself saying, "I need to go through this again". I need to slow down even more and fully embrace the principle of Sabbath laid out at the end of each chapter. I must be obedient to God and work this principle out in my life.

Simplifying Your Life - What is Life?

Many have sought the meaning of life or to figure out just what life is. Some have broke it down into biological terms, others into psychological terms. In what I deem to be a great moment of epiphany a number of years ago, I think I came up with the right answer. I was giving a teenager a ride home and she asked me that question, "What is life?" I pondered for a moment and said, "Life is relationships" Jesus summed up life when he said that the two greatest commandments were to Love God (relationship)and love people (relationship).

In the Old Testament when the principle of Loving God with heart soul and mind was given. It was followed by a command to lay this principle down in our families (relationship).

Statistics in Canada show that 1 out of 3 marriages will end in divorce. People are switching churches with the seasons because of fractured relationships. In a transient society relationships have become disposal and they do not need to be maintained. The point I'm trying to make is that our relational distress, is causing us lots of stress and complicating our lives.

Paul taught that we should: "Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is." Ephesians 5:15-17


After this verse, he goes through specific rules in maintaining key relationships in your life. Paul is encouraging us that a person who is living carefully, diligently maintains there significant relationships. Those who don't are fertile ground for complicated, stressful lives.

Life simply - maintain your significant relationships.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself to Establish Sabbath

1. What do I need to cease?
2. What do I need to do to rest, physically, emotionally and spiritually?
3. What do I need to do to make it Holy (A day of worship)?
4. How do I make Sabbath meaningful for my family and in community?
5. How do I keep from becoming legalistic?