Thoughts of a Sojourner

At 2:15am on February 21, 2025 my life changed in a way that no matter how strong your faith or how much you may think you are prepared, the loss of my bride shook me to the deepest of my core. Yes, I know she received her ultimate healing and immediately went into the presence of our Lord, but the sudden finality of a wonderful 34 year marriage was crushing to my heart and spirit in a way that I cannot put into words (I do plan in the near future to write a series of entries here about my journey through the grief process and mine & Kim’s story of love that spanned 39 years). One thing that this event did was in the days, weeks and months that would lay ahead was to cause me to think a lot about life ahead and how I wanted to approach life. The one conclusion that I came to was that I wanted to discover what it was to live life simply. You may ask, “What does it mean to live life simply?”. What I want to do in this entry is share my version of what it means to me thus far in this second half of uncharted life for me. First, when I say living simply, I mean to determine to let go of things that bring unnecessary stress to life. This involves not allowing things unnecessarily into my life that could steal my joy, peace and freedom in Christ. I turned to the scriptures, specifically Matthew chapters 5-7. I first looked at what are known as the B-Attitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). These verses I rediscovered the attitudes that we are to have in our attitude toward living life. In these 12 verses, we see the word “Blessed” which translated means “HAPPY” precede each thing that we are to exhibit as believers. Then in verses 13-16(Chapter 5), we are to simply be salt and light to the world around us, that is we are to make a difference in this dark world that is our current home. Verses 21-26 (chapter 5) teach us that we are not to remain angry, but seek reconciliation with those we may have wronged or that have wronged us – life is too short to allow unforgiveness to steal our joy. Chapter 5 verse 37 reminds us to be honest in our dealing with one another and have a reputation of being people of integrity. Chapter 5 verses 38-42 remind us that we are seek peace and not retaliation toward others. Verses 43-48 shows us that like Christ, we are to love our enemies and not just love those that demonstrate love toward us. Chapter 6 begins in verses 1-4 by reminding us to hold loosely to what God has blessed us with and when we have opportunity to give out of what He has blessed with to give, but not give to be seen by anyone other than God. In 6:5-13, Christ reminds us that the first focus of our prayers should be the worship & adoration of our perfect Father in heaven and verses 14-15 reminds us that deals with the high priority of practicing forgiveness due to our need of forgiveness from our Heavenly Father. Matthew 6:16-18 reminds us that we are not to wear our “religion” on our sleeve, but rather true religion for the believer is most importantly lived inwardly through our relationship with Christ through a deep, inward faith in Him. Chapter 6 verses 19-24 should cause us to cease seeking to serve the masters of this world for gain that is temporary, but rather strive to live a life that makes a difference eternally as we serve the only Master (Lord). Matthew 6:24-34 really is the reminders that helped me in the past 8 months, that we should resist worrying about the mundane things of life that world says is so important because our Heavenly Father is our provider of peace in this messed up, fallen world and provides exactly what we need, provides it perfectly and in the perfect time. These verses also remind us to quite living in the “what if’s” of tomorrow, but focus on this current day that God has, out of His grace blessed us with and live it to the fullest with joy, peace, happiness and with the same grace that He has provided us. Finally, Matthew 7:1-5 reminds us to properly judge ourselves before we begin to make judgements concerning others. This passage does not tell us that we are not make judgments, but rather first judge ourselves. In doing proper self judgement, it is then that through godly, gracious judgement we will judge according to grace by which we have been judged. In closing this blog entry, I want to make sure you understand that the things I have shared are not shared out of arrogance as if I have arrived so to speak in all of these areas, but I am most certainly a work in progress that still falls short so many times. These things though have been the catalyst to helping me to live simply because these verses really teach us that life for the believer really should be boiled down to these principles becoming practices and characteristics of our life. I believe if one will commit himself/herself to seeking to live out these things, life will certainly become less complicated, peaceful, with less stress, more joy and a life lived that has the greatest potential to glorify God which is our highest calling as Jesus followers.