What Propels Us--January 23, 2023

What Propels Us--January 23, 2023

"Not that I am referring to being in need; for 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." [Philippians 4:11-12]

There’s an often-repeated story about a businessman who goes on vacation to the ocean, where he finds a man in disheveled, rather tattered looking clothes fishing off the pier with a very slow, laid-back demeanor. This man at the pier was clearly hoping to catch what would become his supper. “You know,” the businessman, “if you took another job right now and worked two jobs, you might soon have enough money to buy yourself a boat.”

“And then what would I do?” asks the laid-back man with the fishing pole.

“Well, you could catch more fish, make more money, and soon, you could get an even bigger fishing boat, to catch even more!” came the confident reply from the businessman.

“Oh, I see,” says the other. “And then what?”

The businessman seems eager to be giving out this entrepreneurial advice, so he answers, “You could hire more and more workers who would do more and more of the fishing and you could be the head of the company, in charge and calling the shots!”

“Oh, I see… and then what?” came the familiar reply.

“Well, then you could make enough money that after enough years, you could retire, put your feet up, enjoy life, and just catch some fish all day long,” says the businessman… to which the other man can only smile and reply:

“Sir, I am doing that already.”

Turns out it is possible to be quite content with only a fishing pole to your name, and it is just as possible to be quite empty inside while your giant house is full of possessions. And if that is true, then being content is not directly related to the external circumstances around you.

Or at least, it doesn’t have to be.

As our year exploring different dimensions of love continues, we now turn in these weeks of Epiphanytide to what it means that love "is not envious or boastful," and a key to both of those is discovering how to live without needing to compare ourselves to other people.  When we look at what other people have and think they have it better, we end up envious; and when we compare ourselves to other people and think we're superior to them, we end up boastful.  There are dangers either way, and both of those attitudes stifle our ability to receive what we do have and to appreciate it as grace.

Contentment in life, which goes a long way toward a peaceable life, can be cultivated when we are willing to stop defining ourselves in terms of how we measure up to someone else, or what our external circumstances lok like. If you decide that your happiness is all tangled up with the amount of possessions you own, or how your salary compares to someone else's, or whether your stuff is better than your neighbor's, then, yeah, you have just let your external circumstances hijack your life. But on the other hand, if there is something else, something internal, something planted and rooted deep within you, that gives you a deep joy, then you can be content even when all the other outside stuff feels like it is falling apart.

A sailboat can only move when there is enough wind to fill the sails and push it forward, and it can only move where the wind’s direction will allow it to go. A sailboat (if it doesn’t also have some kind of onboard motor) is more or less at the mercy of external factors. A motorboat, on the other hand, has its own internal source of propulsion, and so it can travel even when there is no wind—or when the wind is blowing in the wrong direction.

Paul talks about contentment in the much the same way: it is about having a God-planted source of joy in our lives that makes is possible for us not to pin our hopes and our peace on what happens to be going on outside of us. And that kind of Christ-centered peace allows us to keep on an even keel regardless of what the wind is doing today. Christians are motorboats in this sense, I guess.  Or at least, we are free to be motorboats, if we dare to pull the cord and not leave ourselves solely to the mercy of the wind.

Notice that Paul doesn’t say he can be content all the time because being a Christian automatically means that things go right for us all the time. And notice that he doesn’t say that more food or creature comforts wouldn’t be nice. It’s just that his source of peace isn’t tied to having more. Rather, it comes from trusting in a God who promises to provide enough. Enough for the day, enough for a life, enough to satisfy. When you can trust in that promise, the worries that come from the need always to have more, more, more just… dissolve. You don’t always have to keep asking, “What next?” like you are driven to buy or manage or hoard more stuff. Paul finds his peace, his groundedness, doesn’t come from how things are going around him or how he compares to anybody else—they come from the presence of God who dwells within him. And that is what he is offering to us, too.

There is a line from a poem my grandfather used to read to me, from Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” that talks about, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.” Something like that is the freedom of Paul’s kind of contentment, of Christian contentment. It’s not saying that it’s not nice to have more than you need from time to time, or a surprise bonus piece of cake after dinner, rather than being hungry. It’s not saying it’s not nice to have the creature comforts of air conditioning or cable television or a smart phone or whatever your personal wish-list would include. It’s just saying that those external things are impostors when it comes to really determining our peace and deepdning our love. They can come and go and we will not be left sitting still dead in the water waiting for wind. When we let Christ’s promise to hold us always be enough for us, we don’t always have to be eyeing the next leap as though that will make us happy. Maybe we have already been given all we need to be content… right where we are.

If envy of others or boasting to others keeps me from being able to love them well, then the things that help me not to be caught up in envy or boasting in the first place are likely to help me grow in love, too. And when my inner propulsion comes from knowing I am beloved of God, I don't need to rely on comparing myself to anybody else either way.  Staying grounded in God's love for me, then, enables me to love others without constantly comparing myself to them.  That's where we can start today.

Lord Jesus, give to us today the eyes to recognize the gifts you have placed in our lives today, to appreciate them, and to find peace in your presence, independent of what is going on around us.