Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. – Philippians 4:4-7
A certain level of physical satisfaction is fairly easy to achieve these days in most developed countries. Mental and emotional satisfaction is not quite so easy. We see people striving and struggling, not to be filled with food and decently clothed, but to fulfill an elusive, ephemeral vision that promises happiness. Were he to stand on Wall Street today, I wonder if Paul would say to us as he did to the Athenians, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” A life insurance salesman who worked a territory somewhere southeast of Dallas told me that he had trouble selling in a certain area. He said if the men there had a trailer house on a couple of acres, a pickup, and a bass boat, they were satisfied. I actually admire that kind of simple approach to life on the physical level. While knowing when we have enough is good, we can be assured that Jesus is not going to leave us either in mere material contentment or in pursuit of the wrong goal. The early church preached that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God”.
The idea of entering the kingdom through tribulation is also reflected in John 16:33 where Jesus says: In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. He is not talking just about great world-shattering cataclysmic events – though those can and do happen. He is not necessarily talking about our being persecuted for our faith in Christ, though that, too, is promised to us. He is saying that some days your car won’t start. The baby will have a rash. The dog will eat your last bagel. The boss will have PMS. The lawnmower will break when you start to cut the grass. You will spill an overpriced macchiato caldo down the front of your new Egyptian cotton pinpoint shirt. God is in the business of messing up our satisfaction when we are satisfied with anything less than Him. This is the negative aspect.
Paul tells us the positive side in his letter to the church at Philippi quoted above. The Psalmist echoes it as well, saying, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” While it is possible and not unreasonable to interpret that statement as being about material blessings, it is mostly about having God Himself as both the object and source of our satisfaction. He assures us that, if we seek Him we will find Him. If He is the focus of our desire, He will be ours as we are His.
I suppose you could say that I count on Christ to disrupt my life with a little turmoil when I let the wrong things get to the top of the stack. By now I should have learned to check my priorities whenever I find myself getting upset and discontented. This is not to say that even my best efforts to keep God first in my life will prevent troubles large and small from erupting day by day as surely as a pop quiz in history class, but rather that I should know the answer every time because it is always the same: The Lord is at hand.
And, by the way, these pop quizzes count for one hundred percent of your grade.
