"I am busy because I am lazy. I indolently let others decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself...If I vainly crowd my day with conspicuous activity or let others fill my day with imperious demands, I don't have time to do my proper work, the work to which I have been called. How can I lead people into the quiet place beside the still waters if I am in perpetual motion?"
The past two weeks have been intensely emotional. I have been angry, I’ve been sad, I’ve been happy every time I’ve heard my wife’s voice or my son’s cry. But deep inside there has been a quiet contentment that isn’t controlled by my emotions, not by my circumstances, but by something simple. My contentment has rested solely in what I have claimed to have had as the center of my very existence, but I have failed to understand contentment until the last 2 weeks.
The idea of joy, contentment, or even happiness is just that, an idea or a dream if the center of our lives isn’t firmly set on Christ. The dreams that I have dreamed have all but died or at least the road that I would have chosen to achieve them have shifted dramatically, and yet there is a peace that I am just where I should be. I have a history of becoming restless, seeking for the next thing, the next idol built in my honor. Today I have no fear of tomorrow, for I finally understand that tomorrow can worry about itself. We are being made today for what we will be and what we will do tomorrow.
If we are always looking forward, or even from side to side, thinking that the grass must be greener on the other side we miss the point of abundant life. When Christ said he came to give abundant life he said that joy and contentment would be the fruit of that abundant life, but that cannot exist without an understanding of our security in Christ. When we allow ourselves to place our fears about tomorrow at his feet we then begin to rest in the peace and security that is found in his arms.
