Simplicity…

TODAY, I HAVE a fantastic opportunity. As I sit at my computer, looking at the blank screen, a cursor blinks benignly and awaits my signal to begin. I can express my ideas with grandiose words and magnanimous articulation. I can write big words on this page, words like “thoroughfare” or “boulevard” or “promenade.”

            Or I can keep it simple and use ‘road.’

            I can type words that are abstruse and profound. I can say “That writer’s perspectives are contemplative, filled with sagacity.”

            Or I can say, “I like the way he thinks.”

            This computer doesn’t care if I use words likes epicurean or gastronomic. It will respond to what I type. I can say, “The last twenty-four hours have been invigorating, gratifying, and absolutely Promethean in every way.”

            Or, “It’s been a good day!” I get to choose.

            Good writing and good living are a lot alike. Every morning, I face a blank page of life, another blinking cursor. I can perambulate through the happenings of today, contemplating the quintessence of their significance.

            Or, I can walk in faith. The choice is mine.

            I can pendulate and vacillate and bifurcate myself into spiritual schizophrenia.

            Or, I can trust and serve and believe.

            Simple is better. The more profound I try to be — the more ostentatious and ubiquitous my approach to God — the further I get from the little children Jesus loved to hold in his lap. I think they used short, easy words to talk to God. Just listen to kids when they communicate, and the openness of their lives. They pray for lost kittens. They ask honest, innocent questions like, “Why are our tongues wet?” When they cross the street with a dad, they reach out in simple faith and hold on to a hand much bigger than their own and assume, “He must know where we’re going.”

            The Songwriter got up one morning and sat looking at a blank piece of paper. I can almost picture him leaning back, looking up into the sky and smiling, as a profound thought crossed his mind. He put pen to paper and began the first verse: “This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Short and simple. Kind of like a blinking cursor on a blank computer screen. And, every day, I get to give simplicity another shot.

(Sometimes, now that I think about it, simplicity is not always that simple for me.)