The world is too much with us

When I shared this on Facebook recently,

this was one of the comments:

“There were years when this was true for me – why that stopped is beyond me.”

Considering a response, I was reminded of a poem by William Wordsworth:

The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

For many of us, much of our time is spent striving to get back spiritually to who we know we’re supposed to be at our core.
We spend so much energy and time trying to figure out who we are, and then we spend energy protecting who we are from the outside world.
God wants us to be open and receptive and affirming. The world does not. Many Christians don’t either. Perhaps because they are too connected to the world, or too impacted by the world. I don’t know.
People are messy and complicated. Relationships are complicated.
So we move away from others and the love of God, and we turn our backs on opportunities to love others. All for the sake of getting and spending and keeping what we don’t need, because the world is too much with us.
Jesus tells us to be as open and receptive as children. The world tells us to be otherwise.
Let us strive to be less like the world, and more like the love of children and the love of Jesus.