Probably over a year ago now, I started writing a children’s literature study I titled “Lessons in Virtues.” I needed 13 lessons to make a quarter, so I started by making a list of 13 different virtues to use and ideas for passages to go with them. I had 12. I needed one more. And, I knew what it should be—contentment.
But, I have to admit, I was groaning internally like an angsty teenager at the thought of adding that to the list because I like that word about as much as I like the word patience. When I couldn’t come up with anything else though, I finally added contentment to the bottom of the list and, in not my most spiritually mature moment, told myself I’d just put off actually writing the lesson as long as I possibly could in hopes that inspiration for a replacement virtue would come to mind and I could avoid contentment altogether.
With 11 of the 13 lessons already completed, last week, whenever I even thought about writing, I kept coming back to the fact that it was time to write the contentment lesson. But, thanks to a nasty sinus infection, I didn’t actually get around to any writing last week. Yesterday, though, between trying to sleep, coughing, and blowing my nose, I finally wrote it.
I dreaded writing it so much because I’m pretty sure my longest attachments in life have been to certain articles of clothing in my wardrobe I may have owned since high school or, if you add up both times I worked there, to my part-time convenience store job. I’ve just always been far more restless and unsatisfied with life than content.
Contentment is a hard virtue. There’s a reason Paul wrote that he had learned to be content. How did he learn contentment? He learned it by being hungry. He learned it by being in need. He learned it by being beaten by the Jews with 39 lashes five times. He learned it by being shipwrecked three times. He learned it by being stoned, by being imprisoned repeatedly… Paul certainly wasn’t able to say he had learned to be content in whatever state he was in because he had only ever been in pleasant states.
Sometimes we have to experience fear greater than we ever have before to find a settled peace. Sometimes we have to experience the deepest of hurt and finally come to the place where we can forgive and let it go before we can realize a lot of things in life just aren’t worth getting worked up over or holding on to. Sometimes we have to be made to feel our weakness before we can learn to trust Christ to give us strength. Sometimes we have to walk through intense longing, bitter disappointment, severe depression, and/or other agonies before we can start looking for the goodness of God in every circumstance.
Now, should I have had a better attitude about the contentment lesson from the start? Yes. But, I also know from all the things that happened while I was avoiding it to make me a little less restless, a little less unsatisfied with life, and a little more content that I wasn’t meant to write it until I couldn’t think of writing anything else. I had some growing to do, and while that growing was far from painless, I’ve learned growth is a beautiful thing no matter how it comes. Sometimes it does come slowly—painfully slowly. Sometimes it comes through sorrow, pain, and heartache, and it just hurts. But, however it comes, growth is a very good thing. And, however it comes, we should praise and thank God for it.
justsamjw 