“If God is your cause, you will be well content. If, on the
other hand, self-seeking lurks in you, it will trouble you and weigh you down.”
— Thomas รก Kempis (1380–1471)
A helpful suggestion: swap the
words “if” for “when”.
When God is your cause, you will
be well content. When, on the other
hand, self-seeking lurks in you, it will trouble you and weigh you down.
The basic causes of contentment
and discontentment lay within the levels of our coherence and incoherence with
God. We must be prepared to give up what we cannot keep in order to gain what
we cannot lose. This is the paradoxical argument of the Kingdom that Jesus
ushers before us in the Gospels; that, if we wish to be first we must be last
of all; that, if we wish to be content we must give our contentment away.
Many people grapple with these
concepts and never really work hard enough in endeavouring to understand them.
The few that do grapple are inevitably blessed in hidden Gospel ways.
Giving up What We Can’t Keep...
Most of what we see, and what
attracts us, is fleeting and transitory. We cannot keep it, yet it often keeps
us. These are the issues of life that hold us; those things we cannot easily
let go of... our food issues, our alcohol and other drugs, pornography, our
anger, the resentments and unforgiveness that keep us from peace, the childhood
fears that serve only to condemn, and our materialistic fetishes, etc.
There are so many things we cling
to in this life, and these are manifestations of our inner anxieties. Each of
us has insecurities that we try to cover by the substitution of so-called
easier things than God, often not realising that God is a straighter path to
the release of those selfsame anxieties.
Our task is to identify these
things that hold us and find ways of letting go, whilst being patient with
ourselves in the process. God will help if we ask him and seek him.
... In Order To Gain What We Cannot Lose
When we let go of those things
that interrupt the flow of the Spirit within us, we gain something we cannot
lose: eternal life. A much
more magnificent concept is eternal life than eternity, for eternal life is
designed for here and now as much as to come.
When we learn to let go of our
grip on those physical things, notions of power and control, and our emotional
issues that plague our relationships, we are gifted this spiritual portent
called eternal life through the knowledge of God.
We prove we know God when we do God’s will.
***
When we give up what we cannot
keep in order to gain what we cannot lose, we truly know God. Learning to let
go is about learning to receive the blessings of God. True contentment lies in
relaxing our grip on worldly things, whilst clinging to the things of God with
all our hearts.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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