Friday, February 15, 2008

2 Easy Steps To Contentment

"One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given... [At] the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished... you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other." –C.S. Lewis –Perelandra

Hmm, so the title is a bit of a misnomer –there is no "easy" path to contentment. But Lewis puts the whole thing into such simple terms: God sends us gifts, and we face the option of happy acceptance or sour (and futile) rejection. Life is a gift, then; an endless series of "goods". Awesome... Simple, and yet I make it so difficult to translate into real life. LOL, I guess even this late-night essay that stares me in the face is a gift from God. Time to seize it with two hands :)

"Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." James 1:17

3 comments:

Michele said...

Amen, Sister! "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done"-meaning Your kingdom is more important to me than anything on this earth; meaning I will trust in You no matter what I think of, or what I want in my present circumstances. If we could say in sincerity the Lord's prayer every day, I think that would be a good key to contentment.

Louise said...

I like the way C.S. Lewis put that - it's so true... it's up to us, by the Holy Spirit's power, to make the best of all the amazing gifts God's given us. but like you said, it's so easy to despise the gifts and make ourselves discontent.

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! Rom.7:24-25

btw, nice picture :) it's copyrighted, you know... hehe j/k

Ruth said...

LOL, I was going to put a "photo credit" blurb in, and forgot... So here it is: photo credits to Louise :)