You’ve been closer to heaven than you might have realized. Let me jog your memory. Zero in on your post-diaper, pre-K years. Remember your childhood? What a splendid season. Waking up was a great idea, and waking your folks was even better. The day’s highlight was the first sight of daylight, and the only bad time was bedtime. You were old enough to walk but not old enough to worry. What was there to worry about? Ice cream had no calories, imagination had no boundaries, and life had no salaries. You climbed, not the corporate ladder, but the playground ladder. Life was simple. Your desires were simple. You could spend an hour spinning a coffee can or a day digging ocean-front sand. Your schedule was simple. You never checked an itinerary, consulted a calendar, or made an appointment. If you wore a watch, you wore the plastic one that came in the cereal box. Childhood has no second hand or alarm clocks. Wasn’t life simpler?
What happened to the simplicity of childhood?
Time happened. Alarm clocks started buzzing. School bells started ringing. Birthday candles began increasing. We soon learned the fallacy of the phrase “telling time.” We don’t tell time anything. Time does all the telling: telling us to hurry through the caution light, truncate the conversation, purchase a cemetery plot. The noun time attracts prepositions like a dog attracts fleas. “In” and “on” attach themselves. Finish the job “in time,” and get to work “on time.” The demands of time steal the simplicity of life.
So does the complexity of stuff. Look at the stuff we manage. We keep cars gassed, beds made, books shelved, doors locked, and bills paid. What four-year-old thinks about tonight’s dinner? What forty-year-old doesn’t? You once couldn’t differentiate between a mortgage and a monkey, and now your mortgage might be one of the many monkeys on your back. Stuff complicates life.
So do people. Divorces. Lawsuits. Dads who work too much or kids who won’t work at all. People complicate life. They break hearts and promises, make messes and demands, and require daily feedings of grace and forgiveness. People weren’t so complex in playground days. You could fight one minute and share a teeter-totter the next. In these adult days we sulk longer and bruise deeper. Maintaining a list of offenders is . . . well, it’s complicated. It’s been complicated ever since time, stuff, and people happened. If we could just get rid of them all.
If we could just follow the example of the Christmas tree salesman from Michigan. Each Thanksgiving he and his wife migrate to San Antonio and park their gooseneck camper-trailer next to a tent of Christmas trees and spend the holiday season supplementing their retirement income. He’s a friendly sort, and I enjoy hearing about his simple itinerary. One year I asked him where he was going after Christmas. This was his answer: “I suppose we’ll head to South Texas for a bit. Sometime in March we’ll turn left and go to Florida.” That was it. Boy, his schedule sounded good to me. My schedule had more entries by lunch than his had for the next year. Wouldn’t it be great to pack it all in and go to South Texas until March, then turn left to Florida?
But we know better. We’ve learned better. Our complexities have a way of following us to Florida or Maine or the golf course or spa. Time pressures happen there as well. So do the stresses of stuff and people. If simplicity is what you seek, you won’t find it selling Christmas trees. But you will find it by going one more round with the complexity question.
What really complicates life? Sin.
To sin is to turn to anyone or anything for what only God can give. To turn to a hard body or a Harvard degree for significance. To turn to a bottle of Scotch or a night of sex for pain management. To turn to religious busyness for guilt therapy. When we ask anything on earth to do heaven’s job, we sin. And sin turns life into an advanced Sudoku puzzle.
Calculate the time we spend undoing the damage of yesterday’s sin. Fighting bad habits. Avoiding toxic relationships. Regretting poor choices. How much energy do you expend repairing yesterday’s decisions? Am I overstating the case when I say life is complicated today because we sinned yesterday?
Work with me on this. How much simpler would your life be if you never sinned? Never disobeyed God. Never ignored his teaching or rebelled against his will. Extract all the fights, binges, hangovers, addictions, arguments, excessive debt, impure thoughts, and regrets from your life. Don’t things get simpler quickly?
Stay with me now. Multiply your answer by a few billion, and imagine how different our world would be if no one ever sinned. Work on this for a moment. If our world were sinless, how would it be different?
No unwanted babies or unresolved tensions. No nation would go to war. No tongue would gossip, no husband cheat, no wife chide. Sinlessness means no exploding tempers. Sinlessness disarms all bombs and weapons. We wouldn’t bury ourselves in debt, buying what we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t know. We wouldn’t beat ourselves up for stumbling yesterday because in a sinless society we didn’t sin yesterday and won’t stumble tomorrow. Or ever.
Can you imagine how sinlessness would simplify life? When you can, you’re imagining heaven. Sinlessness is the chief reason heaven will be simply wonderful.
“No longer will there be any curse” (Rev. 22:3).
The curse is the consequence of sin, the hangover of rebellion. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned. They relied on a tree to give what only God could give—life. When they sinned, simplicity caught the last flight to Seattle, opening the door for complexity to move in.
Work became complex. “Cursed is the ground because of you” (Gen. 3:17). The ground stopped cooperating with mankind, demanding “painful toil” (v. 17) and producing “thorns and thistles” (v. 18).
Relating to God became complex. No longer did they walk with God. Instead, they feared his voice and avoided his presence. When God asked, “Where are you?” Adam said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Gen. 3:9–10 NKJV). Like a swarm of killer bees, foreign emotions attacked them: shame, guilt, and fear. Relating to God was no longer as simple as a walk in the garden. Nor was relating to each other.
Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the snake. The snake was nowhere to be found. Relationships became complex. And their days became numbered. Behold the knockout punch of the death curse. “[You will] return to the ground, for out of it you were taken” (Gen. 3:19 ESV).
Talk about a tumble off the side of a cliff. As fast as you could bite an apple, the earth hardened against its caretakers. Adam and Eve hurried away from God, and God set the timer on their physical bodies. The curse complicated life. The lifting of the curse will simplify it.
“No longer will there be any curse” (Rev. 22:3).
No more struggle with the earth. No more shame before God. No more tension between people. No more death. No more curse. The removal of the curse will return God’s people and universe to their intended states. He will do this because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13 ESV). Christ endured every consequence of the curse: shame, humiliation, even death. Because he did, the curse will be lifted. And because he did, life will finally be simple.
You won’t sin in heaven. You won’t sin in heaven because you won’t be tempted in heaven. Satan, the tempter, will be thrown into the “eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41 ESV). He will no longer be present to tempt us.
But do we have to wait until heaven to enjoy a simpler life? Are we destined and doomed to insanity in the meantime? By no means. You can inaugurate simplicity today. You don’t have to go to Florida to find it. But you do need a Savior.
Jesus Christ has great dreams for you, my friend. He offers joy in this life and perfection in the next. Want to simplify life? Simplify today by letting Jesus forgive the sins of yesterday. “Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us” (Heb. 12:1 NKJV). Sin ensnares us, entangles us. It trips us up.
How cluttered is your heart? How long has it been since you let God cleanse your sin? If it’s been a while, now you know why life seems so crazy. Let God do what he wants to do. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9 NKJV).
Simplify today by letting God forgive yesterday.
Simplify tomorrow by setting your heart on heaven.
You have a friend who will take you there. His name is Jesus.