“Everything around us works against reordering and simplifying our lives. Everything! Ours is a cluttered, complicated world. God did not create it that way. Depraved, restless humanity has made it that way.
God made us plain and simple, but we have made ourselves very complicated. Ecclesiastes 7:29 TEV
Advertisements have one major goal: to make us discontented, woefully dissatisfied with who we are and what we have. Why? So we will acquire what they offer. And acquire we do! The watchword of our consumptive society is very loud and assertive—more! Enough is never enough…
And not only do we want more, we must spend more time maintaining those things. Staying ahead of that maddening pace leaves us strained, fretful, and breathless…
To reorder one’s own world, the need to simplify is imperative.”
Charles Swindoll, Intimacy with the Almighty (Nashville: Countryman, 1999) 26-28.