Part of a ten-part series on contentment by Jean Williams
A man was walking across a cow pasture when his foot hit something. He bent over, rubbed his aching toe, and noticed the corner of a box sticking out of the ground. Curious, he grabbed a stick, dug away the dirt, and opened the lid. His heart thumped as he reached in and felt the solid weight of gold. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching, then covered the box with chunks of turf. He went home and sold everything he had, from the coat on his back to the roof over his children’s heads, and bought the pasture, cows and all. The whole town thought he’d gone crazy. He ended up a richer man than he’d ever been before.*
We have a great treasure. We have Christ himself! Yet we complain about what we don’t have. We envy those who with more than us. We write bucket lists. We regret what we’ve given away. We wish life had turned out differently. We have enough, but we’re greedy for more. We whinge when things don’t go our way. We worry we don’t have enough stored up for the future. We look back longingly at the things we left behind.
And all the time we tell ourselves that discontent is just a little sin. But we don’t notice how it eats away at our lives, our relationships, our faith. We fail to see the idolatry at its heart, how we have become adulterous lovers and false worshippers, seeking fulfilment apart from God. We abandon his living water and look for satisfaction, security and significance in the leaky wells of this world, then we’re surprised when we are left empty.
If we grasped just how great our blessings are in Christ – how richly he supplies every need, how tenderly he watches over us, how bright our future is with him – would we ever feel like we lack anything? I think we’d be content. More than that, I think that, even in sorrow, we’d rejoice to be found in him.
If you’re anything like me, it won’t be easy to learn this lesson. It won’t be easy to find your contentment in Christ alone. It will be a life-long battle. It will be challenged every time you suffer, every time you fail, every time you notice someone is better off than you. But it’s worth fighting, because it’s a battle to treasure Christ over all.
Contentment isn’t horizontal. It doesn’t come from comparing ourselves with others. It doesn’t come from counting our blessings. It doesn’t come from thinking about those worse off than us. Paul never tells us to be content because we have more than someone else.
Contentment is vertical, not horizontal. It comes from knowing Christ. We will become content when we learn to turn to him every time we feel dissatisfied; when we trust him to care for us; when we value him above everything and everyone else.
We find satisfaction in him, for he alone can fulfil our deepest longings. We are secure in him, for he will never leave us. We have significance in him, not because we have done great things, but because he has done great things for us.
Jesus is the secret of contentment.
I am a long way from learning this. I guess you are too. So let’s pray together that we learn to be content.
* This, of course, is a thinly-veiled retelling of Jesus’ parable in Matthew 13:44-46.
1. What are some things that have challenged or encouraged you as you’ve read this series on contentment? What’s something you’ve learned that you could share with someone else?
2. What specific, practical changes would you like to make to your life, actions and thoughts as you learn contentment? Pray that God will change your heart as you seek to make these changes, and that he would help you to be content in Christ alone.
