Excess is Not Enough ...

This is a blog from a sermon the notes on which I found quite by accident whiel penning a trifle on simplicity of European life. As the sermon, Pastor Mick's, was one he gave back somewhere beteween December 2009 and February 2010, I'll only leave here the gist of what I heard. I think the thoughts are timeless.

In America, we do not or no longer know the word moderation. We do not know the meaning of moderation in our work, We consistently bring it home. Ask my wife if I'm guilty here ...
We buy clothes when the closets are full; toys when the kids already had too many; groceries when the refridgerator is full (only to see too much end up as refuse). We have an interesting phenomena in the US that is patently absent in Europe: storage locker facilities! ... full of more of what we arguably could go without. We "need" or act thus ... th elatest iPod, cellphone gadget, GPS and Blackberry, the newest model car or toy.

At Christmas, we are shopped to our limit and we shop to the tune of Michael Jackson's "Don't stop 'til you get enough." A former co-worker of mine one described his life as a youth spent honoring his personal bumper sticker/credo/mantra:

Excess is not enough.

But moderation is truly more Christian than excess ... ref: Psalm 63

Do we hunger for righteousness, do our stomach's growl (if not from physical hunger) for helping the marginalized in our society. We fedd our pangs for travel, Packers tickets and NASCAR. But where is our "gusto for God"?

Faith, in one sense, is not the restraint from ALL things, but restraint from "the right things". The things that do not satisfy ... the soul. As Psalm 63 sings, joy is not the absence of suffering; it is a delight in God's presence, it is hearing the songs of His creation in the birds each morning as I now walk kilometers over dirt paths to catch a bus to catch a train to walk 15 more minutes to a simple, but adequate desk ...

Europeans seem to have still retained some more measure of a handle on "enough". At least more than Americans seem to remember froma time seemingly past. There is still palpable here "the exhiliration of the wide-eyed" as the Psalm says. As Pastor Mick shared:

God gives each of us "a little faith" (we need only the size of a mustard seed) to stir our own brand of restlessness. We are human. We want good things, but often in bad ways. We want a house, not for the true ability it offers to keep us dry and safe and warm, but "for its own sake" and what it can "say about us". This seems, if not patently aabsent in Europe, at least a concept that they often have to struggle to relate to. Life is simpler, houses are simpler (but homes are just as warm), possessions are fewer, but seemingly more meaningful in and of themselves and are not measured in number or quantity. Or so it seems to a sojourner passing through, but one who stayed long enough to observe.

We are searching for a new Pastor. May they be someone of moral charcter with the vision to ask us to possess "a gusto for God", may they "have loving life down through their fingertips", may they task us and challenge us to "extend our reach beyond our grasp".

From a small nation in Israel rose the tide that rolled far beyond its borders.

From a small discontent, we can change the world (read Three Cups of Tea!!)

God works with what we give Him, with what He sees in us ...

Let's trive to do one meaning ful thign each day. As Mother Teresa is known to have said and lived: You need not do great things, but strive to do small things with great love.





If you want to hazard a look at the extent to which we have segregated our society between the haves and have nots, go to the library and borrow Nickeled and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. It's an eye-opener and, if its not a heart-opener, then we've become Tin Men, Dorothy.