When the seemingly trite is true …

At times life can be incredibly complex, but it’s often more fulfilling and more productive the simpler we live it.

But doesn’t it seem that we human beings have a penchant for making even the simple stuff of life more difficult than it has to be? Pastor Joseph Smith said the following about our capacity to complicate things …

Some of us love to take the simple and make it complex. Some of us thrive on taking perfectly obvious matters and making them as obscure as possible. My neighbor’s car has on it a bumper sticker that says, “Eschew obfuscation”. After about a half-hour with the dictionary, I found out that means, “Keep it simple, stupid.”

Tom Hanks starred in the movie, “Castaway,” in which he played the role of a sole survivor of a plane crash that left him stranded on a remote island. A long four years later, he finally escapes the island on a raft, is eventually picked up by a freighter, and returns to his old life. After struggling daily for survival for so long, his character finds even the simplest things of “regular life” to be remarkable.

There’s a scene near the end of the movie where Hanks is lying in bed, flipping the light switch on and off repeatedly. After years of gathering wood and “making fire,” the simplicity and power of the light switch leaves him mesmerized.

Sometimes the simple things really can be the most profound.

That’s true about the important things in life as well. Sometimes the seemingly trite really is true. For example, there’s a simplistic-sounding saying that offers this insight: “I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I know Who holds tomorrow.” While that simple sentence may appear to be a trite little saying, it’s true, and in a profound way. In that simplicity of truth, we can find our means of discovering rest and peace in even the most difficult and complex of circumstances – by trusting the One who holds tomorrow.

Sometimes life has real complexities, but even then we can experience peace in all our challenges by remembering that we may not know what tomorrow holds for us, but we do know Who holds tomorrow.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding,” Proverbs 3:5.

Rid yourself of the burden of anxieties by keeping it simple.

Scotty