Discontentment

Anxiety and worry, have much to do with an uncertainty of the future, whether it's short term (garbage flying out of the back of your truck) or long term (losing your job).  Frustration is usually the result of some immediate event, that is blocking my agenda and plans.  Discontentment, which is the subject today, most often arises from ongoing and unchanging circumstances that we can do nothing about.  Before I go further, it's important to recognize that not all discontent is wrong.  We should have a healthy discontent with our spiritual growth.  If we don't, we aren't growing.  We should also be discontent with injustice and suffering, when we have the ability to make a difference.  The discontent I am writing about is a sinful discontent, that negatively affects our relationship with God.
Here are some examples of unchanging circumstances......

• An unfulfilling or low-paying job where your boss acts like the c.e.o. from the movie The Incredibles.
• Singleness well into midlife and beyond.  
• Inability to bear children.
• An unhappy marriage.
• Physical disabilities and appearance.
• Continual poor health. 

In addition to these often painful circumstances we also fall prey to discontentment in trivial matters.  I am not good at administrative tasks, and when a certain week seems to be all about administration, I find myself tempted with discontentment.  Obviously, this is very trivial compared to the list above, but nevertheless a real battle, to the extent that I want to drop-kick my printer across the room.  

Yesterday, I mentioned Psalm 139:16 as a passage that helps me with frustration, but the same truth that God is in control, and has appointed all of my days, still applies to ongoing circumstances.  Psalm 139:13 can help us further, "You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb." God has so directed our DNA and other biology to be exactly how he wants it.  I have a huge forehead because God wanted me to (my brother in law calls is a 5-head instead of a 4-head).

Amy Carmichael wrote a poem entitled "In Acceptance Lieth Peace" she writes of a person who is wrestling with their ongoing circumstances, and as you read the last two lines, you see how peace comes to him.

He said, "I will accept the breaking sorrow

Which God to-morrow

Will to His son explain

Not vain the word; not vain:

For in Acceptance lieth peace.

This is not resignation done grudgingly with a smoldering discontentment underneath.  As Amy Carmichael has pointed out so clearly-- it's not resignation or submission, but acceptance.   You will recognize a constant theme in anything that I write--the importance of a firm belief in the sovereignty, wisdom, and goodness of God in all the circumstances of our lives.  May all of us learn to accept the things we cannot change, for his glory, praise, and our own joy.   You might be thinking "if he only knew my situation he wouldn't be so annoyingly preachy,"  but I write as one who has had very difficult circumstances at times in ways I cannot share with you, and the truths I have typed have been absolutely helpful as I have struggled along the way.