Calling vs. Clutter

Shortly before I met my husband, the Lord impressed the following verses on me:

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 (NIV)

I believe at that point God was pointing me in a new direction – “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life” – one that I would be called to continue in for an undetermined amount of time, possibly the rest of my life. It was a significant moment and began to totally reshape my thinking.

In the ensuing years God has led me through a time of studying and living out simplicity and all that is connected with it. As a result of those life experiences, I have had the opportunity to speak and counsel with others.

One of my favorite classes/seminars to teach is Calling vs. Clutter: The Joy of a Purposeful Life. Unfortunately, about the same time I started teaching this series a book about living purposefully came out. It seems to me that the whole “purpose thing” has been way overdone so I’ve been contemplating a new title for my series. I decided “deliberate” would be a better word so from now on it’s Calling vs. Clutter: The Joy of a Deliberate Life and I’m hoping that no big name folks in the publishing world decide to create a monopoly on the word deliberate!

But even if the name has changed slightly, my commitment to helping others live out their calling hasn’t. My simple definition is:

Calling: The life purposes for which God has uniquely created and gifted me.

Each of God’s covenant people has a calling. It varies from person to person, but God has created each of His children with special giftings and purposes in mind. To confidently live out that calling is truly a joy.

When most people hear the word clutter, they automatically think of boxes in the basement, knickknacks all over the living room, and the junk drawer in the kitchen. But I think clutter is actually a lot more pervasive than that. My definition is:

Clutter: Anything that keeps me from living out my calling and being effectively used by God.

Clutter can be material, financial, spiritual, emotional/mental or time/commitments. Anything – even good things – that keep us from living out our calling is clutter.

I’m constantly on the lookout for clutter creeping into my life. This month I finally took care of one item of clutter that had been on the “to do list” for several weeks – I cancelled our AOL membership.

Being a member of AOL isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. As I shared previously, I met my husband on AOL so obviously it holds some value in my life! But it became clear to me over several months that being on AOL with its multitude of tempting links to this, that and the other thing tempted me to waste a lot of time surfing online, reading stuff that wasn’t necessarily wrong or sinful, but just a general waste of time. So after finally admitting to myself it was clutter, it was time to get rid of it. I find that I do spend a lot less time online now and it does free me up to focus on other things more in keeping with my calling. In this case, I had to agree with this wise sage:

To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
St. Augustine