[picapp align=”left” wrap=”true” link=”term=ice&iid=7945539″ src=”1/c/3/3/Snow_and_ice_76f1.JPG?adImageId=10366444&imageId=7945539″ width=”234″ height=”147″ /]Once upon a time there was this thing called “winter.” I read about it in the Little House on the Prairie books. One scene in particular remains in my memory: visiting the barn during a blizzard. As I recall a rope stretched from house to barn so that Pa could get there and back without getting lost and dying just a few yards from the relative safety of the cabin. Perhaps my imagination was too vivid, but I can still feel a twinge of Laura’s angst as she waited for her beloved father to return.
We now sit in our electronically climate controlled homes, watching the weather’s effect from the safety of strategically stationed web-based cameras, complaining vociferously about the grand inconvenience that our daycare is closed and that we have to figure out who will take care of the children. So extreme is our sense of entitlement that we expect the gods of winter to only visit between the hours of 11p and 4a, leaving only what the road crews can easily clean up on our behalf before the morning rush.
What is the matter? I seriously doubt one person stumbling upon my corner of a virtual existence is in fear for their life today due to what used to be referred to as “normal winter weather.” Most are trying to figure out how to survive past the depletion of the Pop Tarts.
How about a hot cup of contentment to chase away the chill of the air? As a fellow proficient complainer I know I must drink of it often.
I found this devotional written in the 1800’s. I updated the language a little bit, but it is otherwise unchanged.
“I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content.” — Philippians 4:11, KJV
These words show us that contentment is not a natural propensity of man. “Weeds grow everywhere.” Covetousness, discontent, and murmuring are as natural to man as thorns are to the soil. We need not sow thistles and brambles; they come up naturally enough, because they are indigenous to earth: and so, we need not teach men to complain; they complain fast enough without any education. But the precious things of the earth must be cultivated. If we would have wheat, we must plow and sow; if we want flowers, there must be the garden, and all the gardener’s care. Now, contentment is one of the flowers of heaven, and if we would have it, it must be cultivated; it will not grow in us by nature; it is the new nature alone that can produce it, and even then we must be specially careful and watchful that we maintain and cultivate the grace which God has sown in us.
Paul says, “I have learned … to be content;” as much as to say, he did not know how at one time. It cost him some pains to attain to the mystery of that great truth. No doubt he sometimes thought he had learned, and then broke down. And when at last he had attained it, and could say, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content,” he was an old, grey-headed man, upon the borders of the grave—a poor prisoner shut up in Nero’s dungeon at Rome. We might well be willing to endure Paul’s infirmities, and share the cold dungeon with him, if we too might by any means attain unto his good degree. Do not indulge the notion that you can be contented with learning, or learn without discipline. It is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually. We know this from experience. Brother, hush that murmur, natural though it be, and continue a diligent pupil in the College of Content.
Spurgeon, C. H. (2006). Morning and evening : Daily readings (Complete and unabridged; New modern edition.) (February 16 AM). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.
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