Contentment

I got to hold my friend’s six-week old little sweetheart recently. He alternated between sleep and wakefulness, scrunching up his face into those adorable facial expressions that only a newborn makes. Every so often he would stir, stretch, and test out his growing strength by lifting his wobbly head.

While I held my friend’s baby, she was teaching a Bible study on contentment to the young girls in our “Keepers at Home” club. My friend herself is a beautiful picture of contentment as she looks for and appreciates God’s goodness and mercy in trials. A few hours after his birth, my friend’s precious little boy, the first son after several daughters, was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. His first weeks have involved extra health challenges and lots of hospital time. But as I talked with my friend, she didn’t complain in the least. Instead she said that every step along the way there has been something good for which they were able to be thankful.

I’m afraid that my response to difficulties is much more often a complaint than thankfulness. Discontent is a sin I am all too familiar with. But when I am discontent I am telling God that I don’t like the way He’s doing things. I need to take some lessons from my friend and Habakkuk who was able to exult in the Lord in the midst of difficulties.

Habakkuk 3: 17-19 Though the fig tree should not blossom And there be no fruit on the vines, Though the yield of the olive should fail And the fields produce no food, Though the flock should be cut off from the fold And there be no cattle in the stalls,
Yet I will exult in the LORD, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
The Lord GOD is my strength, And He has made my feet like hinds' feet, And makes me walk on my high places
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Comments

Rachel Pierson said…
Thank you Anne, I have been trying for some time to think of that Habakkuk passage. Realizing that one of my besetting sins is grumbling and discontent, I have been in prayer for a gentle and quiet spirit for some time. That, however I think might be the frosting on the cake of contentment. Even as I realize that it would take a pure heart, created by God, in me to be thankful in trials and adversity, I am thinking, "How can I do this?"

Rachel

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