Lenten Detox, Part 5: Strength to Be Content

There isn’t any white cheese left and my four year old wants the white cheese. The Bob the Builder DVD from the library is the wrong Bob the Builder, the old claymation affair from 15 years ago, not the jazzed up new version. (Yes, we still get DVD’s from the library, which, according to my younger sister, is “sooo quaint!”) And the new Shimmer and Shine tennis shoes do indeed shimmer and shine…but they don’t light up!

When did these children of mine become such complainers? Why can’t they just be content with what they have? And when you come right down to it, they have a lot. I try to point that out often.

Being told to be grateful probably isn’t that effective. Likely more effective would be modeling contentment for them.

So, am I content? If I look over my life when I have a rare quiet moment, I see that I am so blessed. I know that anything less than 100% contentment and any more than 0% whining would be inexcusable. It would put me right in the Israelites’ camp. That “stiff-necked people” just couldn’t keep from complaining, even thought God led them, fed them, and kept them safe, all in miraculous ways.

He does the same for me.

My last trip to the grocery store looked like this.

Well, that’s what it looked like from my four year old’s perspective, hanging out in the cart, and, apparently, playing with my phone.

So much food. So much food. More food than 90 percent of the world’s population would ever see in one place at one time. Yet I complained about the few items that were not restocked, and the long wait at the checkout. A ridiculously long wait. Hey, I have little children. I deserve a fast checkout.

When I am in that rare quiet moment, I am content. But when I am in the fray, when I’m racing through my to-do list while wishing I could just take a nap, when a slow checkout puts the brakes on the racing and sets me back 20 minutes, I’m not always modeling contentment to these little ones. What I end up demonstrating is impatience, ingratitude, and entitlement.

Ugly attitudes. I try to blame circumstances. But God reminds me that he has given me someone who modeled contentment for me, in any circumstance.  “I have learned the secret to being content in any and every situation,” Paul wrote. And his circumstances were much more dire than my own: “…whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” (Philippians 4:12) He might have added, “Whether free or imprisoned” and “Whether healthy or near death” as well. And what was his secret? “I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

That last verse is very familiar. We see it often. I’ve even seen it on the email signature of a personal trainer. And there’s nothing wrong with using this passage to help us achieve a fitness goal or get through a grueling night with sick kids. But it’s good to remember the original context of this marvelous, inspiring verse. Paul is talking about the strength to be content. All the time. In any circumstance.

The 2011 NIV translation of this section of Scripture makes that more clear:

“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”

It is Holy Week. Jesus went to the cross for my impatience, ingratitude, and entitlement. For my complaining, and my excuses that my circumstances are to blame. He now lives to make me strong. Strong to be content, and show my contentment, even amid the day-to-day struggles of momhood, with all the demands on my time and energy. Strong to resist my stiff-necked Old Eve. Strong to be different, to be out of step with our culture of entitlement. Strong to trust in His provision, knowing that it will be all I need.