What Price for Your Contentment?
Perhaps we all have a price. This is a time, a place or a circumstance in life where we’ll sell something very precious and dear. When the offer comes at premium price will you sell?
So far as our contentment is concerned we’re advised to withhold selling; to retain it as far as it depends on us, for there are surely many times when we’ll lack the peace of contentment due to external pressures – things beyond our will or control.
Worth More Than Refined Gold
When we’ve finally arrived at a place where we don’t do very many things for extrinsic reasons we’ve made it to quite a holy and sacrosanct destination – almost everything we do is done devotedly and not out of duty. For instance, we’re not prone to people-please so much or do things to satisfy an insatiably ambitious heart.
To be able to string together day after week after month of a general contentment – which is still one that wavers, for we’re all human – is such a blessing of the Lord’s esteem by way of a peaceable confidence.
As we look into a mirror and see that smiling face that oozes contentment looking right back at us, and nothing’s fabricated at all, we know we’re onto something big – something to be cherished and prized.
Retaining It Will Cost
Perhaps we all know that in life we can’t have all things just the way we want them. Well, our heads know that but our hearts remain for the convincing!
Attaining contentment is something that’s not too tall an order. Maintaining it, however, like anything really, is a different matter.
There are costs involved in maintaining things. There is hardly anything more certain. To entrap the peace of contentment is going to require from us the relinquishment of other things that seem attractive, but equally carry a price tag.
It all depends if we have the ‘funds’ in reserve and if it’s in the ‘currency’ required. It is a mastery to know the price and what we can and cannot afford. This is the wisdom of self-knowledge and personal insight.
Finally, a Warning
Most warnings we studiously avoid. Even if we obey them they’re negative. But warnings are often lifesaving.
When we consider, now, for a moment, as we breathe in and out and consume the seconds of this living moment, that we’ll be gone soon – that life is genuinely over far too quickly, we suddenly see with a better perspective. What we wanted, do we really want still – really?
Perhaps we do not get what we truly want without a good deal of sacrifice, even to the point of saying “No!” to ourselves. That’s often the hardest part.
But the warning is this: there are many things in this life that will compete for our contentment. These things will offer some very powerful lures – of hefty value in most people’s eyes – and we’ll all be sorely tempted to jump on-board and take that train appearing on a rather definite track. It will lead us somewhere and it’s our choice.
The wise price on our contentment works with our instincts – those gut senses that work for honesty – and we’ll do well to be really honest with ourselves and in tune with those instincts.
It’s up to us as individuals. What’s our price?
