contentment

Over and over, I’ve had this conversation about contentment, longing, desire. And I firmly believe that…

contentment is not the absence of desire

Sometimes I think we feel guilty for having longings. Like we should simply be happy with what we have, resigned to how things are… And that somehow, that’s what it means to be content.

Yet I also firmly believe that our very essence was formed in the image of One who longs for things more deeply than I could ever know. One who understands the hope of a story with an ending better than the beginning. One who understands the ache of the not yet… and even what never will be.

The moment we stop dreaming, longing, hoping, having desires… a part of us will have died. The cessation of desire is not blissful my friends… it’s stopping a part of your being from experiencing the restoration and redemption that is ours. Not desiring anything is not the most godly path either. Let’s be free from that false expectation.

Just because you have desires, does not mean that you cannot be content. It’s easy to pit things against each other as if they’re inherently opposing. As if there was a contradiction between.

But if we can hold this apparent tension, living in both… We can see the beauty of living life to the full.

Of having unshakable peace here and now not based on circumstances while longing, remaining curious, walking in wonder.

My contentment is based in a peace, Peace Himself, who is never changing, never gives up, never leaves and is always with me. It’s not based on circumstances so it cannot be shaken. I may wobble… and I do. But He is never moved. Ultimately, circumstances cannot bear the weight of my contentment. No work, relationship, place, role, title, event, etc. can give me contentment.

Maybe that’s where the freedom to desire comes even as we walk in contentment… the right ordering of desires under the greatest desire of my soul. Who alone Himself gives me contentment so I can hope, wonder, be curious, dream, have vision. All the while, having my ultimate hope secure in Him and Him alone.

Maybe the answer isn’t to desire less, but to desire more deeply, more truly. To dream and flourish in contentment… at the same time.