When I was a child growing up outside London, I dreamed of exotic lands and music was a high octane fuel in the firing of my imagination. I stole my sister's copy of the 1972 album, Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. I still have it and I was gonna bring it, but I just forgot it this morning. I would study the album sleeve.
Where is this exotic looking river? I asked myself, and there was one song in particular that peaked my curiosity and birthed within me the lust to explore. It was the Song America. I lay on my bed listening to the lyrics and dreaming. It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw. Saginaw, how exotic I thought.
Just the strangeness of the name to a 9-year-old who'd never journeyed outside England was magical. I pictured the utopian city of Saginaw where all needs are met and where violence and want are unknown. Then there was the line counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike. How exciting did that sound?
Actually, I didn't know what a turnpike was, so I looked it up in a dictionary and imagined a seven lane highway with American cars, 20 foot long like I'd seen on tv, filled with smiling New Jersey families making their annual stress-free road trip to camp in the mountains. And so I decided there and then that I had to find these places.
I too must look for America. So 30 years later, I emigrated to Michigan because I had to experience exotic Saginaw. Now I know now that there's a Saginaw in Alabama, but from the context of the song, I think it's the Michigan one that they sing about. And then eight years ago, my curiosity forced me to move to New Jersey to count the cars on the turnpike.
There are lots, but there aren't seven lanes, and the cars are not taking smiling families on road trips, but stressed commuters to Manhattan. I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping. I'm empty and aching and I don't know why those lines in the song stayed with me. They were unnerving. They hinted that beneath the glamor, the wealth, the friendliness, the sheer unimaginable beauty and excess of this breathtaking land, not all was well with the human condition.
Maybe in looking for America, I'd encounter challenges, dangers, yes. Even the hollowness that dwells within me, perhaps I thought it's easier to look for America than it is to discover yourself, your real self, the one that is left when your false identities are stripped away. A much older song addresses that aching emptiness.
We read it just now. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. There is no end to his greatness. One generation shall praise your works to another and shall declare your power. I will ponder the glorious splendor of your majesty and all your marvelous works. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving in all his works.
He fulfills the desire of those who respect him.
Psalm 1, 4, 5 speaks to our emptiness, not by making us feel guilty, because who needs guilt when you already have despair? No. Unlike Paul Simon, this poet calls us to take our eyes off ourselves completely, to not dwell on how empty you feel. Don't travel the length of the continent to find the thing that will fill you.
The true bread that will satisfy your hunger. The living water that will quench your thirst is closer than you think. When the moon rises over an open field, it is a sign that you are loved. This world and all its beauty and abundance is a sacrament of the passion that beats for you in the heart of God.
145 is a song of abundance. I will ponder the glorious splendor of your majesty and all your marvelous works. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and loving in all his works. He fulfills the desire of those who respect him. When the abundance of God meets the emptiness of the human soul, miracles happen.
When the abundance of God meets the emptiness of the human soul, peace happens. Take it from a world class warrior. If you want to lose sleep, raise your blood pressure and stifle your joy and who doesn't? I recommend that you believe in a small God with puny resources. A penny pinching God who would bless you, but he doesn't have enough to go round, so you will have to go without.
If you see God as a bank manager, cautiously guarding his fortune in case it runs out and needing to have his arm twisted before he will release any of it, then we would be right to fret. We'd be wise to worry about what will happen to us in this complex and unpredictable world. If our hearts are focused on what we lack instead of what we have, then we will most certainly be anxious.
There's only so much money to go around, only so much happiness, only so much love, only so much God. And if other people are enjoying these things, then there's less available for me. If there's not enough blessing from God to go around, we would be right to compete for God's love to fight for material things, to hoard what we have.
To be defensive, to be suspicious of other people, to reject the outsider, to close ranks and close minds to shun risk, to settle for what we have and dedicate our energy to making sure no one else shares in it. If there's not enough of God's resources to go round, then we end up with small minds, minuscule hearts, deformed souls, and filling our pledge card.
Each autumn will be a moment of fear and resentment instead of love and joy. The mindset of scarcity or the attitude of abundance. Those who look at their own resources and fear, and those who gaze on God's abundance and risk. The small thinker, the person focused on safety. The one content with scarcity digs a hole in the ground and hides God's resources.
Not just material possessions, but they hide their hearts, their emotions, their words, their wisdom, their friendship, their joy, the truly beautiful gifts that God has lavished on them and the world suffers for it. They sense their fear rising and they withhold the word of encouragement because they suspect they might be rejected.
They keep to themselves the wise word, scared of saying the wrong thing. They hold their personalities under lock and key anxious that they are unsightly. I come from a nation of introverts. If there is a room of British people, you can spot the extroverts because they will be the ones looking at other people's feet.
And I know the discomfort that introverts go through in social settings and they think the world is already too full of many words. It doesn't need mine. The nation is already stuffed with trivia and superficiality. It's not waiting for me to add to it. Shallow people doing shallow things are everywhere.
No one wants my irrelevant interactions. So I'll hide my personality, my humor, my wisdom, my depth, my unique take on some issue. But when the abundance of God meets the emptiness of the human soul, peace happens. The Christian author, Annie Dillard, puts it like this. Spend it all, shoot it, play it. Lose it right away every time.
Do not hoard what seems good for later. Give it, give it all. Give it now. Anything you do not freely give becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
This is the lavish God, the passionate God, the wasteful God, the God who lacks caution and shuns restraint the God who will replenish our resources as we give them away. When the abundance of God meets the emptiness of the human soul, simplicity happens. When you were at school and the career counselor asked you what you wanted to be when you left education, I bet you didn't say a professional organizer, but professional organizers are having a bit of a thing right now.
De cluttering has become a science, and as in all sciences, there are different theories about how to achieve a simpler life. Some say you should go through all your stuff and ask yourself two questions, when was the last time I used this? And can I see a time when I will use it again? And the answer to those questions will lead you to either put it back in the closet or take it to the treasure attic at the church bazaar.
But that's not how Marie Kondo does it. For her. It's not a matter of your brain asking rational questions, but your heart feeling radical emotions. The only question she asks is this, does this item bring you joy? I love that question. The key to a peaceful life is believing in God's abundance, and the way to a simple life is dumping things that don't give you joy.
But let's not stop with material things. Let's take up God's challenge to go through every area of our lives and ask that question, does this bring me joy? Ask it of your mind. Does that thought give me joy? That resentful thought, that envious thought, that critical thought, that self condemning thought.
Ask your heart. Does this urge or passion or emotion bring me joy or your work life, your relational life, your spiritual life, what brings you joy? And I I do mean joy, not merely pleasant feelings. The Quaker writer, Richard Foster has written The 10 Commandments of Simple Living.
One, buy things for their usefulness, not their status.
Two, reject anything that is forming an addiction in you.
Three, develop a habit of giving things away.
Four, resist the propaganda of those who are out to get your money.
Five, learn to enjoy things without owning them.
Six, develop a deeper appreciation for creation.
Seven, avoid debt.
Eight, reject anything that oppresses others.
Nine, talk plainly and honestly and
Ten, shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the kingdom of God.
We are left with a mystery. 1, 4, 5 celebrates a lavish God rich in generosity. Yet Christian wisdom insists that simplicity is the way to a contented life. God's abundance, our simplicity. Put those two things together and Simon and Garfunkel song will cease.
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why. We'll, no more be our lyric. We will find ourselves and our purpose. Amen.