Read Ecclesiastes 7:29

Everything around us works against reordering and simplifying our lives. Everything! 

Ours is a cluttered, complicated world. God did not create it that way. Depraved, restless humanity has made it that way!

Advertisements have one major goal: to make us discontented, woefully dissatisfied with who we are and what we have. Why? So we will acquire what they offer. And acquire we do! The watchword of our consumptive society is very loud and assertive—more! 

Enough is never enough....

Not only do we acquire...we keep, we accumulate. Furthermore, we don't simply compete...we are driven to win, always win. And not only do we want more, we must spend more time maintaining those things. Staying ahead of that maddening pace leaves us so strained, fretful, breathless.

Surely, God is not the author of such confusion.

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Wisdom for the Way (Nashville: J. Countryman, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.