Shade tree wisdom 4/4/13

Shade tree wisdom 4/4/13


In the beginning of Walden Henry David Thoreau makes a case against the complexity of modern life. “Our life is frittered away by detail”, he muses, and ends by saying, “Keep your accounts on your thumbnail. Simplify. Simplify”. That was the 19th century, we live in the 2lst.

Our lives are filled with gadgets we can’t use, directions we can’t follow, and forms we can’t decipher. (Tax forms, for instance). Every part of our life is full of choices delivered at a frantic pace. Consider, for example, more than 800,000 apps in Apple apps store, nearly 2000 selections at a perfume counter. In 1980 a typical credit card contract was about 400 words, today it’s 20,000.

Why this mess? Maybe this answer is the right one,. “Complexity is the coward’s way out.”

A certain lawyer asked the Lord Jesus, “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus replied,

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.. . . And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt.22,36-40.)

The commands are brief, easy to understand, and to follow.

The problem lies with us. We know them, but we tend to whittle away at the edges till we have little left. Our sinful nature tends to ask, “Does God really mean that in this enlightened age?”

An example lies just before us in the news right now,. It involves marriage. All nine justices know the word , “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.” (Gen 2,24).

Simple, unless emotion is involved, and judges regard that, instead or what the Lord laid out in His creation.

We have a tool God has given us. Let’s use it, Let’s pray for this land of ours.

GPD 4/4/13