1st Saturday in Lent (Contentment)

Here are Saturday’s readings:

Psalm 30, 32; Ezekiel 39:21-29; Philippians 4:10-20

Paul is commending the Philippians for their willingness to support him in his work, even when that work was being carried on at a distant, even perhaps when their were others who had better cause to assist him and could do so more easily.

In the middle of this, Paul makes his comments about being content with whatever he has, whether that be much or little.  Reading this makes me wonder if contentment is a discipline we should attempt to practice during Lent.

We live in a culture that often seems to be focused on getting to the next thing.  If sometimes feels like we are trying to fit twenty-seven hours of living into a twenty-four hour day.  Bookstore shelves would seem to suggest that we are not only discontented with what we have, but also with who we are.

The question that arises though is, what do we do to encourage the practice of contentment?  I think the first thing that we might need to do is to free up time and space.  By freeing up time, I mean that we need to find ways to cut some of the activity out of our schedules.  This may even mean spending less time on church matters.  In the conversation I was referring in yesterday’s post, I suggested to my friend that perhaps churches should consider the possibility of fasting from committee meetings during Lent as a form of a corporate discipline.  I doubt this will likely happen, but it could be worth a try.

When I talk about freeing up space, I’m not talking about finding a greater amount of space for ourselves, that would likely lead to even more discontentment.  Rather, I mean that we should find a physical space, however small it may be that allows us to remove ourselves from the strivings of our lives and to rest content in Christ.

After all, true contentment lies more in the realization of the sufficiency of Christ as it does in simply removing the extraneous elements from our lives.  This sufficiency is at once the source and the goal of our contentment.  Perhaps today is a good day to ask ourselves, am I truly content?