But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 1 Timothy 6:6-7
“We didn’t even know what moderation was. What it felt like. We didn’t just work: we inhaled our jobs, sucked them in, became them. stayed late, brought work home…We ordered things we didn’t need from the shiny catalogs that came to our houses: we ordered three times as much as we could use, and then we ordered three times as much as our children could use. We didn’t just eat: we stuffed ourselves. We had gained only three pounds since the previous year, we told ourselves. Three pounds is not a lot. We had gained about that much in each of the twenty-five years since high school. We did not do the math. We redid our living rooms in which the furniture was not worn out. We threw away clothing that was merely out of style…
We felt that it was important to be good to ourselves and that this meant that it was dangerous to tell ourselves no…And if it was dangerous for us to want and not have, it was even more so for our children…When we wondered if fevered overwork and excess of appetite were not two sides of the same coin – or rather, two poles between which we madly slalomed. Probably yes, we decided at these times…After moments like that we were awash with self-contempt. You are weak. Self-indulgent. You are spineless about work and everything else. You set no limits…We looked for others whose lives were similarly overstuffed; we found them. “This is just the way it is,” we said to one another on the train, in the restaurant. This is modern life…
When did the collision between our appetites and the needs of our souls happen? Was there a heart attack? Did we get laid off from work, one of the thousand certified as extraneous? Did a beloved child become a bored stranger, a marriage fall silent and cold? Or by some exquisite working of God’s grace, did we just find the courage to look the truth in the eye and, for once, not blink? How did we come to know that we were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the way back to life was to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really needed? We travail. We are heavy laden. Refresh us, O homeless, jobless, possession-less Savior. You came naked and naked you go. And so it is for us. So it is for all of us.”
Barbara Hawthorne Crafton in “Living Lent” in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent (Walden: Plough, 2003) 15-18.
With graphic candor, Crafton paints the picture of “the modern life” and beckons readers to see how feeding our appetites actually starves our souls. This way of living not only hinders generosity; it stifles even the possibility of it. Did the invitation to “begin again” ring true for you? If so, sit with our Savior today, “look the truth in the eye” for He is the truth, and He welcomes all who are heavy laden and in need of rest. He will likely encourage you to let go of all those things and all that money you think you need, not because He wants it all from you, but because that’s how He helps all of us take hold of life in Him.