Simplicity of Life

A few weeks ago, the baby and I went to church. Pastor was working, so he couldn't come, but the baby and I dragged ourselves out of bed and went. In Sunday School, the class had a bit of a problem, there wasn't a teacher. Apparently there was a bit of confusion with the new teachers and no one prepared a lesson that day. Well, instead of a prepared class, Bishop Nelson got up and talked about his time in Africa. He's been working with some of the students at BYU to get power to the school houses. His lesson was one of power and I don't think there was a dry eye, at least not among the women, when we broke for Priesthood and Relief Society.

During one part of his lesson, he talked about how simple things were in the villages there. They didn't have TV or cell phones to consume their day. All they had was each other and that made me start thinking. Sometimes I wish for a society like that. Bishop Nelson said that their homes were built in a circle and in the middle of that circle was where everyone spent their days. Either doing chores or taking care of family, everyone sort of hung out in that yard area and everyone knew everyone else. Everyone knew the neighbors children and they helped raise each others kids. Bishop Nelson said that the phrase "it takes a village to raise a child" was very alive there.

That made start thinking about all the things I have in my life that clutter it. We have a TV, Pastor moved it to our bedroom. It took a great deal of practice to fight the urge to not want to sit in front of it all day. Now I rarely think about it, but it still consumes a lot of time that could be better spent. We have this computer, we have a cell phone, we have a radio. These are wonderful things, but they sometimes get abused. What would it be like if everyone took their mind off of those things and their busy lives? The simplicity of life is something that seems to be lost to the turmoil of day to day life. Wouldn't it be nice to forget about all those things and devote more time to your family, to your friends? I'm sure there's a nice medium, but there doesn't seem to be enough people who have actually found it.

Bishop Nelson said it a lot better then I did, but it was a very touching lesson. How's that for not prepared?