What Does it Mean To Live aRich Life? 

John 10:10

I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. John 10:10

A Rich Life In a Simpler Time

Yona and I have been reading the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder for about a year, and we enjoy it so much. There is such a purity and simplicity about life in that time (late 1800’s)—it was a hard life in many ways, but it was also a rich life. It was a time when people had unflinching conviction, high moral values, a strong work ethic, neighborliness, and a deep sense of gratitude to God for His every provision.

The Ingalls family were part of a generation of men, women, and children pioneering the American Frontier and they moved a good handful of times. Each time they were settling a new homestead, they would have to build a new house and barn from the ground up, and they would break new ground for their crops. They would cut their own lumber, dig their own wells, make their own clothes, grow their own vegetables, and shoot or catch their own meat.

A Longing for Simplicity

In some ways, I am sure most of us are glad we don’t have to do all of that (unless we want to). But there is still a longing—something that calls to my heart from the pages of this story—for the simpler things in life to be enough. As we read about Laura’s childhood, we catch a glimpse of the richness, alongside the hardship, that life must have held for them.

 What might life be like today without all the things that crowd out the stillness there could otherwise be? We may not be worried about meeting a bear in the woods or having to wash our clothes by hand in the creek, but when I think of what people face today and how life feels for so many, I think there are plenty of “bears” that we are up against. 

Today we wrestle with things like… technology, addiction to smartphones, selfies, and social media. There’s to much noise, busy-ness, immense clutter; there is loneliness, isolation, emotional stress, endless financial pressure and overwhelm. People are facing divorce and broken homes. There is child abuse, sex trafficking, abortion, homelessness, and suicide. And there is a growing “norm” within our culture of contempt, disregard, disrespect, and disconnection.

A Rich Life on the Inside

We are, most of us, approaching Christmas with a great big pile of unwrapped presents in the closet, a grocery list for the smorgasbord of food we are going to prepare, a big, warm, messy, cluttered house, screaming “please clean me!” and possibly even a few patient piles of laundry, twiddling their thumbs in the laundry room. (Or is it just me?)

 But on more than one occasion, Laura and her sisters were elated to find a single Christmas penny and some candy in their stockings on Christmas morning. One spring, they were over the moon to find some butter that a visiting neighbor had brought as a gift. This was after eating nothing but dry potatoes and brown bread for months during a long winter of blizzards. On many of those long, dark, freezing, winter days, they would spend the entire day, dawn ‘til dusk, twisting hay to make “sticks” for the fire (because they had long since run out of coal) and grinding wheat, with aching arms, to make brown bread. They could not stop either task, or they would literally freeze or starve to death. And they did it for months.

But when spring came—oh the wonder and the joy of every sweet spring scent, every green blade of grass, every celestial note of the songbird! What a contrast was the warmth of the spring air that had arrived, to those departed frigid days of winter!

There is something about that Christmas penny that sets my mind ticking and my heart longing. Oh how I wish I could be excited about a penny! Heck, I wish I could be excited about a twenty-dollar bill!

The Makings of a Rich Life

But of course, money is not what our hearts need. Our hearts need other hearts. We were created to love and be loved; we need real, personal connection; we need depth in relationship. And we also need solitude, time for thought and reflection; we need to know how to enjoy our own company, and we need to know and believe that the best things in life really are free.

The One that Gives Us Life Makes Us Rich

Not only this, but we need a sense of direction, purpose and meaning. We need something and Someone bigger than ourselves to believe in—we need Jesus. Jesus came from God to dwell among us so that we could see with our eyes what Love looks like; so we could have some kind of tangible picture of the infinite offering of God’s love toward us, the height and depth and width and breadth of His love—baby Jesus.

The gift of baby Jesus is God’s love for the world. We are here today living and breathing in and breathing out because Jesus, Who created our planet and our bodies and breathed His breath into them, stepped into His creation so He could make a way for us to live and not die.

Acts 17:28

For in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). This is where my purpose and meaning comes from. 

Everyday Ways to Cultivate a Rich Life

Now, God also gave us this planet as a place to live and work and play. What are some everyday ways to cultivate that rich life my heart is longing for—to find joy and satisfaction in simple things? I’ve been praying and trying to be still. Here are some attainable ways that I can think of:

 Take a walk by the lake, journal, read a book, get out in nature, sit in my garden, plant something new, play the piano, have a tea party with my kids, spend time with a friend, initiate a play date, write a blog, have a spontaneous beach day, paint with my kids, take a break from void-fillers like social media, sugar, coffee, sodas, etc., de-clutter, clean out a closet, go through toys, books and papers, cook something I like, savor morning cuddles with my kids and morning coffee with my husband, listen to music with my eyes closed.

 Now it’s your turn. What are some of your favorite ways to cultivate a rich life—how do you (or how would you like to) pursue simplicity in the middle of our complicated world?

Read the next installment of  my Little House series here.