SIMPLIFICATION vs ACCUMULATION

"Summer time, when the livin' is easy...." So goes the song about lazy days of summer. When I was a child, it was a slow paced season to do nothing. Oh, maybe run barefoot in the dewy morning grass, put on my swim suit and run through the sprinkler of the hose in the hot noonday sun, catch fireflies after dark and collect them in a pop bottle, and sit out on the porch with parents and neighbors hoping to catch the slightest breeze, (no a/c then!) and chat about the events of the day over fresh lemonade...."
Now summer runs through the calendar at break neck speed; it seems somehow shorter and more hurried than the rest of the seasons. Where is the leisure time I counted on? The list of things I planned to get done "to simplify my life" is as long as when I wrote it. The item about going through my storage areas and getting rid of the accumulated clutter of decades? Oh, there is just TOO MUCH STUFF!

(Sing to the tune of Three Blind Mice)

Too much stuff, too much stuff; more than enough, more than enough,
It's bulging my closets and filling my space; it's growing and spilling all over the place,
I'm tripping all over a terrible case...of TOO MUCH STUFF!

Too much stuff, too much stuff; more than enough, more than enough,
The piles are staring me right in the face, they multiply at an alarming pace,
And soon I'll be buried without a trace...in TOO MUCH STUFF!

Too much stuff, too much stuff; more than enough, more than enough,
It isn't easy to run life's race, with all of this stuff slowing down my pace,
I think that I need some additional grace...(to get rid of) SO MUCH STUFF!
Well, maybe I'll get to it when winter comes!

(Words by Janet Lindeblad Janzen, Copyright 1990
Permission to copy for free distribution granted)

(An antidote to worldly accumulation: Matthew 6:19-21)

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