Read It

Society is freaked out about money right now. Republicans say the government spends too much of it. Democrats say the government should be collecting more of it (especially from the rich). Everyone says she's not making enough of it. Words like "persistent" modify "downturn" and words like "sluggish" modify "recovery." The marketplaces and households of America, always afraid of not gaining more, now fear having less.

So the words of a book from 1981 ring still with prophetic clarity. Although Richard Foster's Freedom of Simplicity had been recommended to me several times in various venues, I just read it last month. What a piercing and graceful essay on the power of living with less--intentionally!

Foster lays a groundwork for simplicity as a way of following Jesus. He does so with a completeness which avoids the dreaded comprehensiveness of academic works. His writing glimmers with subtle humor, shines with faithful clarity, and radiates with love. He strikes the perfect balance between theory and practice, convincing the reader of the need for disciplines of simplicity and bolstering her with concrete examples of practice. Most of all, with grace and wisdom Foster steers the middle way between excusing Christians for their failures and whipping us into lives of ascetic austerity.

I found myself feeling something which written works rarely do these days: I felt convicted. Convicted to change, for the better.

Freedom of Simplicity. If you want to follow Jesus in the twenty-first century, read it.

~ emrys