So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.- 1 Timothy 6:8
Contentment during infertility is something I’m still learning more about and struggling with every day. It goes beyond discontent with being childless. It heads down that slippery slope of getting caught up in the lie that I’d be more content if I had nicer things in the middle of all this. As I tried to type today’s post, I realized that if I tried to share advice or wisdom on this topic, it would be cliche at best and lies at worst.
So I’ve decided to let wiser men and women do most of the heavy lifting today. Here are some insights that I hope will be helpful and encouraging to you.
“Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have.” – Philippians 4:11
The Reformation Study Bible points out that Paul isn’t denying the fact that he often lacks something. Rather, he “[testifies] that he is content to live both in plenty and in want.” His contentment is not based on his material possessions.
Maltbie D. Babcock, a 19th century preacher, elaborates further on the idea that content doesn’t depend on what we’re lacking. It has everything to do with how we view what we do have.
“Contentment is not satisfaction. It is the grateful, faithful, fruitful use of what we have, little or much. It is to take the cup of Providence, and call upon the name of the Lord. What the cup contains is its contents. To get all that is in the cup is the act and art of contentment. Not to drink because one have but half a cup, or because one does not like its flavour, or because somebody else has silver to one’s own glass, is to lose the contents; and that is the penalty, if not the meaning, of discontent. No one is discontented who employs and enjoys to the utmost what he has. It is high philosophy to say, we can have just what we like if we like what we have; but this much at least can be done, and this is contentment: to have the most and best in life by making the most and best of what we have.”
G.K. Chesterton would have agreed with him:
“True contentment is a real, even an active virtue – not only affirmative but creative. It is the power of getting out of any situation all there is in it.”
As you pray today, ask God to help you be content in your circumstances- especially when it comes to finances and material things during infertility. Pray that you wouldn’t look to what you own to make you content.
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