Contentment

I heard an interesting devotional last night at church. Dennis was telling us about how he gave a ride to a gentleman and they were discussing Dennis' old truck. The man kept expressing how nice the truck was, how well it ran, how clean it was, etc. When Dennis dropped the man off, he began thinking about his truck. His truck was purchased new in 1998 and was nearly 10 years old, but in his mind it had lost some of its "coolness". The "new truck smell" was gone. It was old, not one of the new shiny trucks driving around nowadays. Then he really looked at his truck as if he was viewing from the other man's perspective. The truck ran smoothly; the paint job still looked good; it was always vacuumed and cleaned out; it got good gas mileage; the inside was still in very good condition; it was all-in-all a good truck. It just had some miles on it and wasn't "new."

Dennis used his truck to remind us of how there are many things in our lives that we take for granted, spouses being one of those things. He reminded us that often times our "old" spouse is still a good spouse, he/she just might be a little older, a little wrinkled, a little soft around the edges...but still in good working order. Why would we want to go looking for something newer that might not be as good as the "old" vehicle / spouse we already have. Newer doesn't always mean better.

It was a very good devotional and it brought the point home; being content isn't always easy. Our world tells us that we "deserve" to be happy. We "deserve" to have the newest, best, prettiest, shiniest, fastest, most up-to-date ............whatever. You can fill in the blank with the thing, or person, that has been taking up most of your thoughts. Why do we buy into this falsehood that the world sells us? Why are we not content? (You can tell me you are content but I would quickly ask you to tell me your credit card balance.) Do we think that we will be happy if we have a new something / someone else? It can be a very slippery slope and once you start, it is very hard to put on the brakes. Do you remember going down a slide when you were a kid and trying to stop half way down the slide? If you didn't have on a good pair of tennis shoes, then your feet and your hands really burned. You could do it, but it hurt.

Being content is NOT easy. Things / people will always look better than what we have at home. We have to remember that being content is a much better place to be mentally than always wanting something more. Always spending, always shopping, always stacking and always sorting all of the stuff that overflow our shelves, closets, garages, bookcases, backyards, cars, etc. Or looking at the old spouse and thinking a new one would make you so much happier. You have to stop that thinking in its tracks. Stop it at the top of the slide, not halfway down. It's much too hard to stop when things go too far. At some point down the slide you cannot stop, you are committed. You have to ride it to the end. You could have a blast, or you could land in the mud right on your bottom. (I hated doing that when I was a kid. I always thought I could stop before I hit the mud.)

I don't want to leave you with a muddy-bottom ending, so I will end with this scripture from 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 6: "Godliness, with contentment, is great gain." Paul could have just said that godliness is great gain, but he knew that contentment had to be coupled with it. Contentment is key.

What is preventing us from being content and would we really be happy if we had it?