Why God’s Will is that we Should be Content with our Daily Bread

Give us this day our daily bread. Mat 6:11  

But godliness with contentment is great gain. 1Ti 6:6 

It is for our own happiness. There is only one way in which one can rejoice always and again rejoice. And that is by being content always in whatever circumstances. But we know that it is not easy. It can be very easy when one is rich, but it is not so when one is very poor. It is very easy when one is in love, but it is not so when one has been rejected. It is easy in summer. It is not so in winter.

But though it might not be humanly possible to be always content, yet the benefits of practicing that virtue are immense (and paradoxically) will lead to the greatest happiness in one’s life. For if one steals, one will be caught, and sent to jail, and that will be the beginning of a hard life. If one commits adultery, the end of it will always be sorrow and death. But to know that is easy. It is how to do which is the hardest part, ‘For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do’ (Rom 7:18-19).  And that is the power of sin. It always wrecks life in the end. But Christ died so that the sting of sin might be removed once and for all. And it is only on that basis that one can fully grasp the meaning of Christian contentment. We celebrate it not because it has made life easy, but because of the person of Christ.

God might have cared only for the obedient Christian in this life, and to have left the sinner to perish in his sin. But he didn’t do that. He came after the one lost sheep. He left the ninety nine good ones in heaven to come and look for the only one which got lost, me. And it is that knowledge which makes us to be contented. It is that mysterious love which is beyond human comprehension and which makes us to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things and to endure all things (1Co 13:7). It is because of him. His coming down on earth for only me, his suffering and dying on the cross that my sins might be forgiven… I deserved death, but he ransomed me from it, and he paid my whole debt by his own blood, for free! So what can separate me from that amazing love? Is it sickness, is it death? Is it poverty? No, nothing. Now I look at my past and count everything as dung (Php 3:8). And that is how I can be content under whatever circumstances. For what have I suffered which he didn’t? And what have I gained which he didn’t freely give? This is how the regenerate person perceives contentment.

But not so the unregenerate. He perceives that the whole meaning of life is to be happy at all costs. So he puts all his life and energy towards achieving that end. But then he has not reckoned with the power of sin. He wishes to operate like a machine, laying down good plans and knowing all the right buttons to press. But he is usually only as far from achieving happiness as when he first began. He thought, like Solomon, that it might be in the acquisition of things, but they have only made his life miserable. He thought it would be in the satisfying of the demands of the flesh, but he has only succeeded in tying his life in knots. And because he is only human and not a machine, his health crashes, and with that, his whole life. It loses meaning. And he begins to pine for death as an antidote. In fact death assumes the whole meaning of life, a sheer absurdity. His descent into nihilism happens without his knowledge: What does anything matter? Everything else which happens to him after that (assuming his God ‘died’ a long time with Nietzsche) only adds fuel to the absurdity of his life. And having become so alienated with himself how can such a person ever find contentment in this life?

But thanks be to God! He finds him (if he responds to his call), rescues him from himself, and gives him a heart of ‘flesh and not stone’. And it is from that ash that God makes a new creature. And it is only then for the first time in his life that he understands the meaning of life (Ecc 12:13-14). How on earth then can such a person ever fall again into the wild trap of discontentment in this life? He can’t. Because he has God, and having God, he has everything! O merciful God! Unharden our hearts that we might respond to you only as our measure of true contentment in this life!