Keep It Simple

Life is complicated. Growing up there is mid-terms, sports practices, chores, more sports practice, tests, snapchat, instagram, twitter, facebook, texting, and MORE! THEN when you reach adulthood there is electric bills, job reviews, work meetings, elections, snack schedules for your child's sports team, and grocery shopping. I'll be honest TOO many times we get overwhelmed and make life WAY more complicated than it needs to be.

In less than 3 months now, my family will be growing by 1. Our little baby girl will be born. We are all SO excited! Not just because we have two boys and NOW we are having a girl BUT because we are having a baby again.

A few nights ago I was reflecting on this very unique time of life. When a new baby comes into the world it really is ALL about them. It's simple, life almost slows down. Are they hungry? Feed them. Are they tired? Rock them to sleep. Do they stink? Change the diaper. All of those other BIG stressful things about life that seemed to take up so much time, don't really matter that much anymore. WHY? Because the reminder of what's important is so small it fits delicately in your arms.

Baby Isaiah....yeah he was PRETTY CUTE...I'm hoping our girl is THIS cute also!

I LOVE babies. Once I figured out how to hold a baby (as a guy, you don't get practice with this- you don't grow up playing with dolls so how are you supposed to know WHAT to DO?, i held them like a football....apparently that's NOT the right way), it was amazing just sitting there with them. Instead of life being about the stress and everything else going on, it became about that little child in my arms.

What I wanted to focus on today is not JUST the amazing blessing that new life in this world is. I wanted to talk about how WE as people sometimes make things much harder than it needs to be on ourselves. What am I talking about? Well let me give you an example. YOU have a big test next Tuesday. Instead of studying, you spend Thursday, Friday, and Saturday worrying about the test and what you don't know. Then Sunday you watch football. Then finally on Monday night at 9:00pm, you start studying. Now this problem is called procrastination, but the real issue is we have SO complicated things that instead of being pushed to action, we have shut down.

This also of course happened to people in the Bible. A great example is Joseph from the new testament. (Read the WHOLE story of Joseph HERE) Joseph is pledged to be married to Mary. But then life gets complicated. Mary is pregnant with baby Jesus. Joseph doesn't know what to do. Him and Mary didn't do ANYTHING to make that baby (if you know what I mean), SO Joseph decides he will divorce her quietly. But then Joseph gets a HUGE dose of reality. An angel appears to him and tells him it's going to be ok. Joseph should take marry as his wife. That baby inside of her is the baby that is going to save the WHOLE world. Joseph simplifies things, marries Mary, and she gives birth to baby Jesus.

Too many times when our life gets complicated, our eyes stop focusing on God. We let our worry or our stress cloud our vision. At the end of the day, life really is as simple as a newborn. We were put on this earth to tell other people about God. We were put here to show love and kindness to one another. Everything else is ultimately background noise.

So this week if you have a test, study for it right away! If you have a meeting, GO to it! Don't create more problems for yourself. The world has plenty of problems on it's own. Keep it simple!

Just like that newborn baby is still learning to focus it's eyes on you, we need to keep on trying to focus our eyes on God.