To Be Content
In the beginning of L.M. Montgomery’s classic novel, Anne of Green Gables, a little orphan with a big imagination chatters away next to Matthew Cuthbert as he drives the buggy to her new home. Enraptured with everything she sees, she exclaims,
“just now I’m pretty nearly perfectly happy.” Then, lifting a braid, she continues, “I can’t ever be exactly perfectly happy because —well, what color would you call this?”
Matthew, not sure what else to say, replies: “It’s red, ain’t it?.” With a heavy sigh, the little girl explains sorrowfully, “Now you see why I can’t be perfectly happy.”
We might smile at such a seemingly petty cause for perpetual unhappiness, but don’t we all have a tendency to cling to one particular thing or set of circumstances as the reason we can’t be “perfectly happy?”
The more God teaches me about contentment, the more I find there is still to learn. Christian women my age tend to assume that contentedness pertains only to being okay with singleness until the right man comes along, but it’s so very much more than that. True contentment is a state of heart that eventually filters into every area of life.
Paul was one of the earliest missionaries. He had no “monthly support” funds coming in from a network of churches, he had no mission board to help him. Sometimes the believers in a city provided for his needs, but other times he chose to work as a tentmaker so it would be clear that he wasn’t just after people’s money.
Travel was difficult, and he likely would have made all three of his “missionary journeys” primarily on foot. Add to that the fact that he faced persecution, beatings, shipwreck, even stoning! But what did he have to say about his life as a missionary?
“Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Philippians 4:11-13)
Every where and in all things. What a convicting thought! Contentment is not simply floating through life, never feeling the lack of anything. Paul said that he had learned to be content when abounding and when suffering need.
To be content is to live life, to face those unfulfilled desires and unmet expectations head on, to wrestle through the emotions and come out on the other side clinging still to the fact that God is trustworthy. It is to run to God with our doubts, fears, and hurt, to surrender all to Him, to put all into His loving hands and to learn to rest in Him.
Contentment isn’t learning never to feel discontented: it is learning what to do with those feelings when they arise.
Just as Paul was instructed everywhere and in all things, so you and I learn contentment a step at a time through the course of our daily lives.
We learn by taking that one thing we view as the reason we can’t be “perfectly happy” and surrendering it to God, to do with as He pleases. Then, we live our lives looking for what else needs to be surrendered. As we lay one burden down, the Holy Spirit points to the next one, each lesson of surrender preparing us for the next.
That satisfied, peaceful rest we call contentment can only be gained by complete surrender of all our wants, needs, and wishes to the Lord. Contentment, once gained, must also be maintained by a continual heart of surrender that is vigilantly on guard, actively alert to see if there is any area left unsurrendered to God.
I’m so glad the Holy Spirit moved Paul to end his statement about learning to be content with “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Through Christ, I can choose to be content, “perfectly happy” with the life He has given me.
“Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.” Psalm 68:19