by John Moore
Staff Writer
“Contentment is a window or picture frame that sets the boundaries around us in which to live.”
—Susan McCauley, daughter of Francis Schaeffer
After a taste of beautiful weather and more soon to come, it seems the complaints about the gray drizzle that has hung over the hills of eastern Tennessee for months have ended. People begin to study outside and simply enjoy these temperate days of spring.
Attitudes about the weather have shifted from despondency to joy, at least for a time. But before we know it, we may soon bemoan the fact that the sun is shining too much and that the temperature is too hot. Indoors we will go, where we will regulate climate and attempt to avoid sweat as though it were a contagious disease.
Contentment will likely be a struggle for us humans nearly all of our lives on earth. We tend to move from one thing to the next, looking for satisfaction and finding it, for a time, in the new. As the thrill gradually wears off, we move on with time and effort. However, I am convinced, that contentment is a state of mind rather than a place of life.
The weather may be a moot point, as all seasons have their less than desirable aspects; nevertheless, we often lose our appreciation of things for what they are versus what we want them to be. We are inhabitants of a culture that has a notorious predilection to constantly desire everything to be immediate, yet also tends toward that age-old, grass-is-always-greener desire for something other than what we currently have.
As a senior graduating from college in a matter of weeks, it seems as though the world will always attempt to convince me there is something more satisfying than what I am currently doing. The world screams maddeningly at me to make a run for something exciting as I reach this new juncture. But after four years of college and a hell of a summer this past year, my big ideas for changing the world slow down. I don’t know if I will change the world, but that does not matter. The goal is not necessarily to change the world but to follow Jesus.
Contentment may be found in wealth or a good job, a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but ultimately, none of these will satisfy the deep hunger that we all feel. We will always feel that impulse to want more than we have. But what it means to be human does not elude to what station I achieve in life but how I live from where I presently see the world. Following Jesus helps me to see the world more clearly, no matter the circumstance.
A summer ago, I observed Augustine Asir and his missionaries operating in India. Word for the World missionaries live on low income, often minimum wage–a salary of about $60 a month. While supporting their families on this minimum salary, many of these missionaries, all native Indians, choose to live in the slum neighborhoods to which they minister. In these people I began to see a different kind of contentment–one that did not lead them to wanting more stuff or bigger houses or better neighborhoods or better bodies, but straight to the heart of the suffering. My weak contentment was put to shame. It was frail and could survive only when things were in my favor.
Contentment is not found in the surrounding circumstances but in the full, head-on redemption of Jesus. For those with leprosy, little hope may be found in the body or in this life—but a true and undying hope is found in the life of Jesus Christ, the one who came that we might have life, life abundantly. Once, a missionary named Aaron introduced Caleb Beasley and I to two lepers sitting under the porch of a leper colony built by a Roman Catholic Church. Gabriel and Mahgimay, their bodies filled with terrible disease, understand joy better than anyone I have ever met. They are the lowest of the low within the Indian culture, their bodies falling apart, but they love Jesus. Following in His way, their lives have become beacons of light and hope to those around them, and more than anything, they have found contentment though they lie dying.
We, too, lie dying. And good weather will come and go, but the goodness of life will remain. If attitudes of contentment rest on good weather, perhaps you should move.
But come now, you’re better than that.
Tags: Augustine Asir, Caleb Beasley, complaining, contentment, Francis Schaeffer, John Moore, Susan McCauley, Word for the World, You're Better Than That
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