The Security of Simplicity (A Day in the Life)

A Day in the Life of Toby Jones … I woke up at 6 am, looked out my window at the continuing snow storm, put on my Carharts and galoshes, and drove around the bay to shovel out a friend’s storefront walk and parking lot…by hand (Some call it insane. I prefer to think of it as kickin’ it old school). Then I drove back around the bay to help get a widow’s Christmas tree in her house and upright in the stand. She also gave me six silver candlesticks to polish in my “spare time.” I had a nice lunch with my editor, celebrating the completion of my second book and making plans for its March 2010 release. Right now I’m at Roast and Toast coffee shop with WIFI responding to emails and writing this long-overdue blog entry. Next it’s off to pick up my darling 23 month old Eloise from day care for an evening of puzzles, books, leftover meatloaf, and the occasional foray into the snowy white out that is Northern Michigan these last few days.

Such is the life of a tent-making pastor. Most days I wake up not really knowing whether I’ll have any moneymaking opportunities. A couple days ago I got a call from one woman who is preparing to move and another who wanted her cedar trees wrapped for the winter. It’s not an entirely bad feeling – this day to day not knowing what or whether any income will present itself. If work comes, I receive it with tremendous gratitude and approach the actual task with the contemplative spirit of a monk. If the work doesn’t come, I seize the unexpected hours to read, write, reflect, and play with my amazing daughter.

Being a theologian and an introspection addict, I move through this new pattern of existence with an eye toward my spiritual life. What does this tent-making have to teach me about life's heavier things and deeper truths? How might my working life inform or be informed by the Way of Jesus? As I prepare to re-hear the story of no room at the inn, the manger, wise men’s gifts, and a baby who would change the world, where will the resonance point be for me in 2009?

I think it will have something to do with simplicity and the strange form of security that comes with it. Simplicity’s security…sounds almost oxymoronic, doesn’t it? But I don’t think it is. Mary, Joseph, and their child had so little when Jesus came into the world. They were so vulnerable, dependent, even “poor” we might say. But they found an unusual abundance in the apparent scarcity of that night – no room at the inn, but a warm stable with the incredible, quiet companionship and warm, steady breathing of farm animals; no family or friends on hand, but visits from supportive strangers with gifts and angels; no peace in their Roman occupied homeland, but a blessedly silent, starry night nonetheless.

My new life as it unfolds each day is full of this very same abundance, little gifts of work and opportunity when I need them most; unexpected knocks on my door or cards in my mailbox; not enough money for groceries but some good hunting luck resulting in a bagged buck (a male deer that is) whose meat will sustain me through much of the winter.

There’s a little noticed passage in the ninth chapter of Luke’s gospel that has bubbled up for me again and again in recent months. It’s Jesus instruction to the twelve when he first sends them out to preach and teach, to heal and serve. He says, “take nothing with you on your journey – no bread, no bag, no money, no extra shirt…” Why would Jesus do this to these already frightened, inexperienced disciples? Why not give them a survival kit, a packing list of the stuff they’d need on this harrowing journey? I’ve come to understand that Jesus knows how quick we are to worship the idol of self-sufficiency, to live our lives with the assumption that it’s a cruel world out there and nobody else is going to take care of us. So Jesus forced the disciples to be vulnerable, to be trusting, to live in the uncertainty and risk of having nothing with them on their journey.

As I live through Advent 2009 and my journey of discipleship, I think Jesus continues to whisper these very same instructions in my ear. And as I travel without the security of all my usual provisions, I’m finding a security I’ve never known before. I’m finding a world that is less cruel than I thought; I’m coming upon strangers with gifts for me I neither expected nor asked for. I wouldn’t even be surprised to come upon angels one of these nights.