The beauty of simplicity and the challenge of stewardship

In one of my favorite books, Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, the chapter on simplicity exhorts the believer to simplify his life for the purpose of cutting away the clutter that can obscure the work of God in our lives. A way that this can be illustrated is for you to take a few minutes to simply sit still with eyes closed and attempt to quiet your mind and heart - what do you see in your mind's eye? I know that for myself, I often have to fight off images from commercials, video games, TV shows, books I'm reading, or sound bytes from the CD I'm listening to, or whatever. Other people may see their enjoyment of a hobby, or acquiring more things, etc. When your brain cycles are occupied by all of these things clamoring for attention, how are you going to be able to hear the still small voice of God calling out?

I like to think of myself as a relatively simple person. I don't think I have too many unnecessary wants. I have no need to constantly upgrade to the latest and greatest thing if the current one I'm using is still functional. As Foster writes, why not buy things for their utility and then use them until they wear out? I can look around my room and see lots of evidence of this... much of my clothing, I've been wearing since my college days (which, stunningly, are already more than 5 years away from me now). My glasses are way old. My cell phone (the classic Nokia 8620, I think the model is) has a screw loose that rattles whenever I lift the phone to my ear. There are plenty of other things that could probably use some updating to a newer, more efficient model, but I often don't see the need. I like attempting to be simple.

However, I'm beginning to see that one important challenge for me in my personal growth coming up is to learn how to be a good steward while still being disciplined in my attitude towards things. For me, a primary danger is that I can often trick myself into thinking that I'm investing in the value of simplicity when in point of fact, I'm actually just being lazy. I have much to learn about financial matters, managing my money and investments. I have much to learn about investing in people beyond the surface level: beyond the impersonal rhetoric I might say from the microphone on Sunday to a congregation, beyond the daily chats around the water cooler, to actually getting into people's lives. Sometimes it seems like there's too much to do, and not enough time to do it, so I'm consistently tempted to throw my hands up and walk away, content with my own little bubble of self-satisfaction.

The thing is, it takes work to learn how to be a good steward. You have to make some mistakes in investing, nurse your burns and let the wounds scab over. You need to learn where and how to do the research to determine what is the best management of money, time, and effort. I think that sometimes, my completely laissez-faire attitude towards things has in some ways negatively affected my ability to learn how to be a good steward. Simplicity is good, but laziness is a slow-acting poison. Is there really no connection between my disinclination to learn how to research and make the call on getting a new cell phone and calling plan, and my growing list of people that at one time or another, I've wanted to invest in but never got around to?

This is a tension that I think I'll be gradually learning this entire year. For now, I need to get back to being a steward of all the aspects of the life that's been given me.