Fewer and Fuller

The current big topic right now that I keep reading about (and I wrote a bit about in my last post) is “what’s next?”  Two podcasts that I listened two over the last few days were asking that same question - this one from Rob & Kristen Bell and this one from Krista Tippett and OnBeing.  And I heard it in two of the sermons for the worship services I am helped with getting online last weekend weekend.  Yes there are the questions of what’s next with the “re-opening of America” but there’s a bigger question underneath it.  The thing that stood out to me in both of those podcasts though was something that was said in the Bell one and implied in the OnBeing one... fewer and fuller.  

How can we live a life going forward that is seeking for things to be fuller and fewer?  I feel like in what we were trying before Covid-19 showed up was doing as much as we could and therefore we had no ability to get and to go deep.  In the church setting that means more programs, more activities, more services, more opportunities, more more more more more more more.  But when we do that, do we have the opportunity (and ability) to go deep?   

This picture speaks to this - this picture was taken about a week ago at sunrise in a local park.  But this moment only came after sitting and waiting for about 45 minutes as the sun rose over the lake.  It took me staying in that spot for a length of time, taking in what was there, breathing in the moments, and then seeing this.  Were there other pictures taken before and after?  Yes.  But this is the one that spoke the most deeply to me.  

With this I go back to Eugene Peterson’s book on the Psalms - A Long Obedience in the Same  Direction - to live this way is a way of fewer and fuller.  It is fewer things taking us off the path that Jesus gives to us and it gives us the deeper experience of relationship with Christ.  Fewer and fuller.  Breathe it in.