Contentment
6 min read
4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost—also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”
Numbers 11:4-5
I used to think that the Israelites didn’t eat anything but manna for the entire forty years that they were wandering in the wilderness, but that’s not true. They didn’t have fish and fowl; they didn’t have fruits and vegetables; and after their first Passover in the wilderness, they probably didn’t have grains, either.
What they did have, though, was lamb, goat, and cattle—as well as manna. Manna must have provided the carbohydrates and the vitamins and minerals that they needed to survive.
The human heart is so often inclined to want things that it cannot have, even when it has everything it truly needs. We all get like that. I get like that. Learning to be content “in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want,” is, no doubt, one of the secrets to living a happy and healthy life.
That truth is not exclusively held by Christianity. We can probably find similar statements of that truth in Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and so on.
What makes Christianity unique with respect to that truth is the source of the contentment and satisfaction we seek. For every other religion, that contentment comes from within a person. People need to find peace and contentment within themselves.
For Christians, that contentment comes from the Holy Spirit, because it truly cannot come from within ourselves.
So Christianity and other religions and philosophies are pretty much polar opposites in that regard. And that is perhaps why we find adherents of other religions and philosophies running away from the world (from other people) to find contentment. For Christians, however, we seek contentment from the Holy Spirit, even as we engage in the world with all its (and our) sin.
We all crave things that we cannot have. But the solution is to be thankful for all the things God has given to us.
Father, You are LORD over all things, and You bless us with every good and perfect gift. Thank You for every single one: the food I eat, my family, my house, my cars, my golf clubs, my loving wife, my children, this wonderful community. My salvation. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
