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  The Contents of Contentment

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Contentment.  Collectively we want it, individually we must fight for it.  The media is certainly not pushing it.  Contented people do not need entertainment or distraction from pain.  They do not need it to arrive in a box, or tucked inside of a new program or propaganda.  The good news for the media is, most of us are not content.  Thus exists a smorgasbord of information, from health, to wealth, to happiness, from relationships, to generosity, to achievement.  We hone in on our preferences, and fish aimlessly for the missing link in our lives.  

 

Christians are not exempt.   We profess that contentment is found in Christ, but our prayers (at least mine) speak otherwise.  We pray for things, for circumstances, for relationships..more often than we pray for His fullness.  Is it any wonder that contentment never arrives at the door?  We continue to cry if only where God says and now.  Some cry “If only I could run faster.”  Others cry “If only I could run”.  Some cry “If only others could see things my way”.  Others cry “If only I could see.”  And I can only imagine that Adam and Eve, after eating of the tree thought, if only.   

 

But instead of saying If only, God met Adam and Eve in the garden with an and now.  While Adam and Eve were barred from the garden for their disobedience, they were not wiped out of existence or left without hope.  Their unchanging Creator had not changed.  He was still God in aseity, graciousness, impassibility, omnibenevolence, and love.  The act of disobedience could not be undone.  It was fruitless to say if only.  But listening when God spoke and now, would prove to be fruitful.  With and now, God began to reveal the beauty that still remained, the forgiveness that was now possible, the hope that would be, and now, was.  It would be a long time before the dim plan took on shape they could understand.  They (and their seed) would cry if only for an even longer time. 

 

But contentment would not meet them in the if only because contentment lives in the and now.  

And now, in the midst of our pain, God reigns.  And now, in our longings and our disappointments, exists a Heaven.  And now, in all that is unseen, unfelt, and seemingly undone, a Savior sits at God’s right hand proclaiming,“It is finished.”  And now, if only we could see as He sees, live as He lived, hope in His hope.  And now, if only we would echo the Apostle Paul who proclaimed  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:11-12).  Perhaps we would live less of the if only and more of the and now.  

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We are easily persuaded that something rather than Jesus, will be the avenue through which contentment will arrive.  Till we meet Him face to face, we will be privy to this disillusion.  But with grace, with time, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, our longing for Him will increase, and our longing for all else will slowly lose its luster in comparison.  And now is always the time.  To long for contentment.  To fight for it.  To rest in it.

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