In today’s gospel reading, Jesus urges the crowd to be ready, painting a beautiful picture of the blessings that await those who are prepared for God to show up at unexpected moments.* This exhortation comes immediately after Jesus encourages people to get rid of all their stuff. Though these are framed as separate vignettes in most translations, I do not think their proximity is a coincidence.
Telling the crowd to sell their possessions and give to the poor was of course a moral exhortation — a call to reject society’s logic of wealth and power and embrace the logic of love — but it also strikes me as solid logistical advice for anyone who is interested in being part of the family of a not-entirely-predictable God, a God who regularly leads people on meandering journeys into the wilderness and then back out again. Following wherever God leads is much easier when your baggage is light.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, as I’ve felt so weighed down by stuff during the process of moving. Packing it all up and moving and unpacking it again and putting it away in a drawer and then moving it to a different drawer because the storage in this place is different and so now I’m rethinking my whole kitchen organization and… I never want to do this again. Ever.
How did I, the self-proclaimed nomad that moved twelve times in fifteen years, end up here? It wasn’t so long ago that I shed most of my possessions to move to Haiti with hardly a second thought. And now I think: I hope I can still step into this shower when I’m eighty because I am never leaving. I think: I sure hope God is going to keep all my journeys local from here on out. And then I think: I’m not sure I trust my readiness to follow where God calls anymore.
This reminded me of something that I read many years ago, though I’ve long since forgotten the source. A nun was explaining how the vow of simplicity wasn’t about possessions being bad, per se. Rather, the idea was to “live lightly” such that whenever God called, she was ready to pick up and go.
She lived lightly to live ready. I think, once upon a time, I knew how to do that, too. Can I relearn that? What am I willing to let go to remember how?
–Erica Lloyd, Seekers Church
- Do you feel ready to go wherever God might call you?
- What might it look like for you to “live lightly”?
