Stan kind of startled me one morning at breakfast by asking, “Are you content?”
“About what?” I asked.
“Everything and anything.”
“I don’t know,” was my response. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s real important,” he replied. “For a long time, I always thought being content meant I would be settling for second best. Sort of saying that I will just have to be content until I get what I want.”
“Then one day while I was spending time with God in my journal, it became real clear to me that contentment, rather than being a second choice, is the height of what God has for me.”
Continuing, Stan said, “I am to be content in and with Him.”
“If I am fully surrendered to what He wants for me — what He wants me to be and to do — I am content. No second choice!”
Speaking with a voice of experience, Stan continued, “discontentment is the fruit of the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is so easy to get dragged down, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
“All that sounds real good, but how, as a practical matter, do I focus on being content?”
“Keep the proper perspective. For me it is essential that I focus not on short-term fulfillment that will turn into long-term emptiness.”
“But I have to focus on the long-term fulfillment I have been given by God. Long-term in the sense of spending the rest of eternity with Him when my time here is done.”
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I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am in. Philippians 4:11.
Prayer: Lord, thank you for showing me that the height of my relationship with you is contentment. You know my tendency to be discontent. Please help me in being content in you, only in you for all you have for me. Amen.
Waiting for the Train 