contentment

Opening Prayer: Lord, help me to be grateful for what I have, to remember that I don’t need most of what I want, and that joy is found in simplicity and generosity.  Amen. ~A Prayer for Contentment

Scripture: Philippians 4:11-13

Journal: What is your level of contentment in life these days?  What increases it?  What attacks it?  How will you nurture contentment in your life going forward?

Reflection: One step toward it [contentment] is patient submission to unavoidable ills and hardships… There are trials which we cannot change into pleasures, burdens which we cannot lay down, crosses which we must continue to carry, thorns in the flesh which must remain with their rankling pain. When we have such trials, why should we not accept them as part of God’s way with us? Discontent never made a rough path smoother, a heavy burden lighter, a bitter cup less bitter, a dark way brighter, a sore sorrow less sore. It [discontent] only makes matters worse. One who accepts with patience that which he cannot change—has learned one secret of victorious living. ~J. R. Miller

Prayer

Closing Prayer: I would rather be what you chose to make me, O God, than the most glorious creature that I could imagine; for to have been thought about, born in Your thought, and then made by You, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking. ~George MacDonald