Hear the word of the psalmist speaking to God:
I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up,
and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.
O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol,
restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
It is unfortunate that so many think that heaven and hell
are both future tense. As if delaying their enactment
denied in some way their reality.
Yet this psalm clears up this wrong thinking;
Sheol, hell itself, is something that we can experience,
even now, even in this very time and place in which we live.
Sometimes circumstances place us there, and only
the love of God can restore us from the Pit.
Yet in my experience, more often we confine ourselves
to hell on this earth by our own attitudes, our own choices,
our own refusal to let go of paralyzing pain
and putrefying grudges from the past.
We have to want to get well for the healing of God to help.
The good news is that God wants to help if we want to heal.
Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment;
his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
There is a time for tears; we may even baptize ourselves in them.
Yet even that implies a rising, a resurrection to a life,
Full of joy for us and full of favor with God.
Only tears of joy are appropriate to paradise –
there’s no crying in heaven …
As for me, I said in my prosperity,
"I shall never be moved."
By your favor, O Lord,
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
The extent of my wealth doesn’t matter;
if I have the favor of God, then I am prosperous,
prosperous enough to praise God until I leave
whatever heaven I have to earth to find
the more permanent version.
What pain do you need to let go of?
What personal hell do you need to vacate?
The grace of God calls you to be in his presence
and know the joy of being content in his providence.
Grace, and peace,
Ron
Psalm 30 – NRSV
Showing posts with label choices. Show all posts
Showing posts with label choices. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Contentment: an attitude of gratitude
There once were four sisters who lived in the land of Discontent. They were intelligent, they were energetic, they were gifted, but they were not content. As they shared a meager meal one night (a meal that did not cause any of them to leave the table feeling full), they talked about the way that each of them felt that they could find contentment. They disagreed profoundly, so they agreed to go seek contentment in their own unique way, to write to each other about their ongoing search for it, and to share what they discovered about it.
The first sister thought that contentment would be found in experiencing her world; she loaded her backpack and set out to see the world. And bit by bit, she did that very thing. She saw the countless wonders of the world, she experienced cuisine from different cultures, and she sat at the feet of the wise in many cultures. Although she learned much, there was always a new sight to see, a new delicacy to taste, and different voice to hear. She found many things, but she woke up hungry in a different place every morning. She did not find contentment.
The second sister thought that contentment would come from making her world productive. Surely if someone could use the resources of this world wisely, one could have all that one wanted, have the time to relax that one wanted, and this plenty would benevolently spill over into the lives of others as well. She went far and worked hard: she mined, she molded, she harvested, she sold. With her tireless labor she changed the face of the planet, becoming wealthy beyond the imagination of most humans. Others followed her, served her, and modeled their lives after her. Yet when she looked in her beveled glass mirror, she did not find contentment in her face, or in the faces of any of those who followed her.
The third sister thought that contentment would come from understanding her world. She spent years in study around the world, accumulating degrees at the finest universities. She wrote volumes about civilization and history. She understood the subtle intricacies of science and philosophy. She could recognize the obscure references and connotations inherent in the most difficult pieces of literature and visual art. Yet all of her knowledge did not provide the definitive answer to the question of how to find contentment. She could describe twenty different theoretical approaches to find contentment, yet she was intellectually honest enough to admit that she had not actually fully lived out any of them.
The fourth sister never left the land of Discontent. The fourth sister stayed at home, went to college in her hometown, married a local boy, and stayed to teach at her alma mater. She did not see the world first hand, but she studied it well enough to instruct her students in its beauty, its fragility, its diversity, and its unity. She did not reshape the world with her industry, but she did teach her students how to use the world’s resources so that they would remain renewable, and yet could still possibly provide for the needs of every human. At the same time, she showed her children how to measure their lives without counting their stuff. She did not pursue many degrees, but she did create in her students a thirst for knowledge that did, over time, change the boundaries of practical human knowledge.
The fourth sister never left the land of Discontent, but she did leave discontent. She did not change the world into a place of contentment, but she did model for her students how one might want to change the world and still find contentment for oneself. How could she ever be content with the status quo of the world, as long as there was hunger, pain, injustice, or want? She did learn, though, to discipline her desires so that she could learn to be content with what she had. She worked on who she was so that she could be more and more content with who she was. She honed her purpose in life, so that she could be more and more content with that purpose. She was the least famous of the four, but the only one to come close to contentment.
Hear these words of wisdom about contentment:
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.
There is no greater guilt than discontentment.
And there is no greater disaster than greed.
Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC), The Way of Lao-tzu
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.
Robert Southey (1774 - 1843)
To feel that one has a place in life solves half the problems of contentment.
George Woodberry
For the Christian, the words of Paul speak to us most wisely:
I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:11-13 - NRSV
Let us learn how to live in the tension between discontent with our world, and contentment with what we have. It will help us to have an attitude of gratitude toward our God.
Grace, and peace in your hearts,
Ron
The first sister thought that contentment would be found in experiencing her world; she loaded her backpack and set out to see the world. And bit by bit, she did that very thing. She saw the countless wonders of the world, she experienced cuisine from different cultures, and she sat at the feet of the wise in many cultures. Although she learned much, there was always a new sight to see, a new delicacy to taste, and different voice to hear. She found many things, but she woke up hungry in a different place every morning. She did not find contentment.
The second sister thought that contentment would come from making her world productive. Surely if someone could use the resources of this world wisely, one could have all that one wanted, have the time to relax that one wanted, and this plenty would benevolently spill over into the lives of others as well. She went far and worked hard: she mined, she molded, she harvested, she sold. With her tireless labor she changed the face of the planet, becoming wealthy beyond the imagination of most humans. Others followed her, served her, and modeled their lives after her. Yet when she looked in her beveled glass mirror, she did not find contentment in her face, or in the faces of any of those who followed her.
The third sister thought that contentment would come from understanding her world. She spent years in study around the world, accumulating degrees at the finest universities. She wrote volumes about civilization and history. She understood the subtle intricacies of science and philosophy. She could recognize the obscure references and connotations inherent in the most difficult pieces of literature and visual art. Yet all of her knowledge did not provide the definitive answer to the question of how to find contentment. She could describe twenty different theoretical approaches to find contentment, yet she was intellectually honest enough to admit that she had not actually fully lived out any of them.
The fourth sister never left the land of Discontent. The fourth sister stayed at home, went to college in her hometown, married a local boy, and stayed to teach at her alma mater. She did not see the world first hand, but she studied it well enough to instruct her students in its beauty, its fragility, its diversity, and its unity. She did not reshape the world with her industry, but she did teach her students how to use the world’s resources so that they would remain renewable, and yet could still possibly provide for the needs of every human. At the same time, she showed her children how to measure their lives without counting their stuff. She did not pursue many degrees, but she did create in her students a thirst for knowledge that did, over time, change the boundaries of practical human knowledge.
The fourth sister never left the land of Discontent, but she did leave discontent. She did not change the world into a place of contentment, but she did model for her students how one might want to change the world and still find contentment for oneself. How could she ever be content with the status quo of the world, as long as there was hunger, pain, injustice, or want? She did learn, though, to discipline her desires so that she could learn to be content with what she had. She worked on who she was so that she could be more and more content with who she was. She honed her purpose in life, so that she could be more and more content with that purpose. She was the least famous of the four, but the only one to come close to contentment.
Hear these words of wisdom about contentment:
There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.
There is no greater guilt than discontentment.
And there is no greater disaster than greed.
Lao-tzu (604 BC - 531 BC), The Way of Lao-tzu
It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion.
Robert Southey (1774 - 1843)
To feel that one has a place in life solves half the problems of contentment.
George Woodberry
For the Christian, the words of Paul speak to us most wisely:
I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:11-13 - NRSV
Let us learn how to live in the tension between discontent with our world, and contentment with what we have. It will help us to have an attitude of gratitude toward our God.
Grace, and peace in your hearts,
Ron
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Life is like Battleship . . .
One of my favorite games to play growing up was Battleship. If you don’t know, it is a game where you are trying to sink the other player’s fleet of ships. There is no real strategy to the game, except maybe where you place your ships. It is a lot of hits and misses. Eventually in the game you would get to hear your missiles hit the ships, and you would get to hear the computer say “battleship sunk”. What a great feeling it was to know that you had succeeded. A lot of waiting, but to me the reward was worth the wait.
I think that life is a lot like Battleship. There is no real strategy, except maybe where you choose to live, and work, like placing your ships. But even then we don’t know how our choices will ultimately work out; it is a lot of hit and misses. Eventually in life you get to see your choices and decisions work out the way you want, and you get to hear your boss, or spouse say to you good job.
I guess what I am trying to say is that life is a waiting game; we are trying to do the best we can with what we have. Trying to navigate through the sea of life and make the best decisions we can to avoid and sink the devil’s plans (1 Peter 5:8). The wonderful thing for us as Christians is that we are not going about life alone. We have each other to show us were the enemy ships (2 Cor 1:3-4) are and above all we have our Heavenly Father. At the end of this Life, won’t the feeling be great know that you have succeeded, when we hear God say to us “well done, my good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of your master”.
God Bless,
Joshua Birney
Westview House Parent
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