Live simply, so others may simply live.
It sounds so...well... 'simple' doesn't it?! Yet living this out practically in the every day of our lives is something that I'm being challenged with more and more.
How should we do this? Should we apply this principle to everything, or just to things that we look at from now on? How can we communicate this well to the girls so that they 'own' the idea as well, and don't resent any of the changes?
As we look at another major shift for our family (I can hear the groans from those readying their address books for yet another layer of liquid paper!), the idea of what's next for our family and how we can get our priorities in line with God's is a clear focus.
I don't know yet, what's in store for us, but in line with the sentiments from very good friends and mentors, and with little pieces of inspiration from others such as Minimalist Mum, we're going to try to keep the 'main thing the main thing'. The imminent move is giving me cause to view our choices in a new light...
So...what does it all mean?
A paradigm shift for all of us.
What form that takes and how we will live it out, I'm not sure yet - plenty of prayer yet to come on that front...some initial thoughts:
- an obvious and easily implemented one is things like buying with a conscience (ie fair trade coffee and chocolate etc.)
- possibly reviewing companies that we deal with for their ethics and policies (ie Superannuation investments etc.)
- raising our own awareness of issues (this could initially be as easy as watching some news that reports on things outside Australia, rather than the typically very insular news broadcasts on the main channels)
- spending time learning about other cultures with the girls (and hopefully visit some of our sponsor kids in the next couple of years as part of that awareness process)
