Content

I lay there in the quiet the other night trying to think of what I could be, should be, worried about. Maybe I should worry about the “friends” I’ve lost here in this country because of the gospel. Or maybe I should mourn the fact that we seem to take one step forward and twenty steps back with this culture. I should probably be concerned about my physical health or even about the fact that I haven’t seen my family in... how many months now? But I wasn’t able to conjure up the worry and fear. Something else has replaced that natural tendency to over analyze and fret about the things I literally cannot change. Something that feels really foreign and, I’m ashamed to say, even a little unwelcome. 

Contentment. 

I know the word. I know it’s definition and the promise that if I obtain contentment I’ll have great gain. But in all my life I can honestly say I have not felt it, fully deeply felt it deep inside of my soul, until that moment as I laid there in my bed. I’ve felt peace, yes... that’s the only thing that has kept me going. But contentment is completely different. It’s not a coverup or a bandaid for some broken part I’m trying to cover up or heal. It’s a whole new emotion with a whole new mindset. Not that peace is a coverup, because His peace is so pure that it removes all fear. But contentment comes from a place that fear has never even touched. It comes from the realization that Christ is literally all I have and all I want. There is nothing that I desire more than simply Him. I don’t care about where my home is, the seemingly unfruitful labor, what my future holds, or how sick my physical body is currently. I can’t even begin to worry about those things because all I can think about lately is Him. 

How good He is. 

How He has shown His love. 

How much he loves the Japanese. 

How much he loved this entire world. 

How merciful he is towards me. 

How glorious it is to glimpse Him in the mundane and regular days. 

Maybe contentment does begin in Love. True, undefiled, soul-changing love that can change my entire heart and mind and comes from the creator of Love itself. I’m learning it, this contentment... learning to accept it and to dive deeper into it. There is great gain at the bottom of this dive and I think I’m glimpsing it now, glimpsing Him now.