You may have to downscale materially to upscale spiritually. If owning things, maintaining them, and worrying about losing them is robbing you of the things that matter most like peace, joy, and fulfilment, consider simplifying your life. Downscale on the things that don’t matter, so you can upscale on the things that do. During her successful career as an opera singer, Jenny Lind, known as the ‘Swedish Nightingale’, became one of the wealthiest artists of all time. Yet she gave up her career at a time when she was singing her best. And she never returned to it. People speculated about the reason and wondered how she could give up applause, fame, and money. But Jenny seemed satisfied to live in privacy in a home by the ocean. One day a friend found her sitting on the sand with her Bible on her knees, looking out at a glorious sunset. As they conversed, the friend asked, ‘Madame Goldschmidt [Lind’s married name], how is it that you came to abandon the stage at the height of your success?’ She answered quietly, ‘When every day made me think less of this (laying a finger on her Bible), and nothing at all of that (pointing to the sunset), what else could I do?’ King David owned all the stuff we dream about, yet he wrote: ‘One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple’ (v. 4 NKJV). Now, there is a man with right priorities!
