Tossing Limestone

I sat out on my back deck last night watching Honeybun to make sure that she didn't pull off the neck donut and get at her stitches. My bruised bottom ached but I was content, watching the dogs and sipping a glass of wine. It was beautiful outside, with a cool breeze, the first day of long jeans weather. There were no mosquitos, which is a rarity here. I never liked mosquitos, but I like them even less now, with a friend that almost died from West Nile Fever and is still struggling to recuperate. The trees were just beginning to change color at the very top. Our yard is covered with trees, so it was like looking out on a forest. The crickets were just beginning to chirp as the evening fell softly and the breeze rustled the leaves.
"People pay money to do this on vacation," I thought, "Sitting on a lovely back deck overlooking a forest...."
Honeybun sprinted across the yard like a deer....
"...and wildlife, and sipping wine in perfect weather. Why don't I do this more often?"

Thoreau was right about so many things. We do indeed clutter our lives with all kinds of unnecessaries, when there is so much wonder and delight in just being still surrounded by nature. We need so little. Why do we work ourselves to death going after so much? Asherel and I are on page 25 of Walden by Thoreau. By the end of the book, I am certain I will be living in a little 10x7 hole dug in the ground and lined with sod, dressed in fig leaves, and eating grubs. At the least I will go through my closet and give one pair of my twenty pairs of shoes to charity....

Of course, Thoreau was not the first to say it. KIng Solomon reminded us that all the riches in the world will never satisfy, the psalmists spoke of contentment in God alone being the source of all peace, and in the New Testament, Paul urges us to cast aside the love of money and be content with what we have. What is is that drives us to have bigger and better and more of it? As Thoreau points out, we then become the "tool of the tool". Our possessions own us, and they are a tyrannical master. I love how Thoreau describes finding 3 lovely pieces of limestone which he placed on his desk. But very quickly he saw they needed dusting. He tossed the limestone out the door.

I am going to start tossing limestone.

Hebrews 13:5 (NIV)
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”






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