It's not either / or

Hi Reader,

Welcome to Living Contentment - your weekly nudge towards a life of Biblical contentment.

Here are today's three contentment-related things for you to

read | do | pray

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READ THIS

Sometimes the thing that can wrestle away our contentment is our worry. It's the disappointment, dissolution, our heartache. The pain of betrayal, the hurt of someone else's anger, or just being present in another's suffering snatches away our contentment.

But it doesn't have to.

It's easy to believe we can be content OR dissapointed.
That we can be hopeful OR in pain.
That we can be glad OR mourning.

But it doesn't have to be either/or.

Douglas McKelvey (author of the incredibly life-giving book series Every Moment Holy) said something along the lines of:

If you dream of a better relationship with your child, you have to sit in the pain that it's not great right now.
if you long for your marriage to be restored, you can't hang on to that dream without admitting it's not there yet.
if you deeply long for a job that is more fulfilling, a car that is less broken, a back that is less ache-y - you have to accept that you don't live those things..

Yet.

Waiting for the fulfillment of things you hope for means you are by definition waiting - so you still have the struggle of the wait.

Don't trick yourself into thinking because you have pain you can't also have hope.
Don't be convinced you can't have beauty because you have brokenness.
Don't believe the lie that you can't have contentment, because you have suffering.

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DO THIS

What is that one great thing you're waiting for? That relationship to be restored, that hope to be fulfilled, that dream to be realized?
Can you live - right this second - in the messy reality that while it is not yet what you hope for - what you dream it will be - what you think God will eventually restore - you still cling to the hope that it will be?

Can you live with both hope and pain? Not feeling like you have to choose - or even switch back and forth - but live in the complexity of that paradoxical reality?

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PRAY THIS

God of all our dreams,
Father of our imaginations,
who give promises of restoration,
and gives us hope for the future.
Give us also the courage to admit we're not there,
give us the faith to live in the messy now,
Give us contentment to be where we are.
Never fully satisfied until we are with you,
in the restoration of all things.
But content to be part of that story,
in the messy middle of it- right here and now.
AMEN.

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Talk to you next Thursday!

~George

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