I’ve been keeping journals for years. Before the advent of computers, I hand wrote them in notebooks, but now I record them in Word documents. One of the things I like to do before I begin a new month is to go back to the same month of the previous year and see what was going on then. I did this yesterday when I went back to August 2010.
August can sometimes be a spiritually and emotionally low month for me, and last year was no different. By the time August rolls around, we’ve usually already had vacation, so after a number of weeks without anything in particular on my schedule and an entire month of summer to go before ministry activities at church begin again, time starts to hang heavy. I get restless and lazy and lethargic and I can’t wait for the church year to begin again. I need to be busy, specifically with ministry.
As I was bemoaning this lethargy in last year’s journal I came to the sad conclusion that SERVING God seems to mean more to me than God Himself. Pretty typically, at the same time that I am complaining against the boredom of late summer, I’m also neglecting to spend time in relationship with Jesus – reading the Bible, worshiping Him, and interceding for others. I’m longing to be busy DOING.
The realization that working was more important than worship made me ask myself the question: “What if you were to lose the ability to DO work FOR Jesus, would Jesus Himself be enough for you?” In other words, where does my contentment lie? Does it lie in the things I DO, or in Jesus Himself?
Just to set the record straight, I know there’s nothing I need to DO to EARN a relationship with Jesus. His forgiveness and the new life He’s given me are a free gift that His death and resurrection made possible for me. All He wants of me is me. If I can serve Him with my hands, or feet, or mouth, or life – GREAT. But if I was laid aside through accident or illness or whatever, and could do nothing, it wouldn’t change His love and acceptance of me, because that has never depended on anything I did, but on everything He did.
As I ponder my question, I think back to the residents of All Saints AIDS Camp in Nassau. They have a lot to teach me about contentedness in Jesus alone. If you’ve read my previous blog about Miss Moxey, then you know she was very special to many of us. You can imagine our joy to discover that she was still with us, living in the same little bungalow as she was two years ago. We found her sitting up in her bed (which I don’t believe she ever leaves), looking just as frail, and, amazingly, just as joyful as she was when we left her on our last day at the camp back in 2009.
Miss Moxey has nothing. Her children don’t visit, and if the absence of recent photos is any evidence, they haven’t been in touch since we were there last. She is still obviously sick, thin, and unable to care for herself. Meals are brought to her. Her tiny room is filled with a single bed and a long dresser with just a tiny path between for visitors to walk, and only one window in that very hot, humid climate. But the moment you enter her doorway, she welcomes you in as if her home were a lovely mansion she could not wait to share.
She invites you to sit on her bed and then she praises the Lord – that she can see, even though she can’t walk; that she can enjoy the view (which isn’t particularly interesting) outside her window, even if she can never get outside herself. She invites you to read her Bible and rejoice with her over what was read.
She refuses to allow you to tell her how much SHE blesses YOU when you visit and instead directs your praise right back to the Lord, the source of her joy and the One in whom she finds her contentment. You might even be favored with a hymn or two to set her praise to music. To spend time with Miss Moxey is to learn what true contentment really means. It’s not about service, it’s about Jesus, and Him alone.
Then there is Garvin. Garvin has cerebral palsy. He is now 30 years old and has been a resident of the camp since he was 12. Although he can be helped into a wheelchair, the entire week we were there he was confined to his bed. Unable to use his arms, he has his meals brought to him and then someone has to feed him while he’s lying down in the same position he’s been in all day. Some of us wondered how Garvin could bear so many years of this kind of confinement. The only one who doesn’t seem to wonder about this is Garvin. He is unfailingly cheerful and smiling and looking forward to his birthday in September. I don’t know about Garvin’s faith, but I do know that Garvin’s life isn’t about doing either, it’s about being content in his circumstances.
And then there’s Arthur. Arthur does manage to get onto his front porch to enjoy socializing with those who walk back and forth on the sidewalk that borders his home, but he’s confined to a wheelchair and that’s as far as I’d ever seen him go. Arthur’s life isn’t about doing either. Arthur is content to sit in his wheelchair and serenade all and sundry with his beautiful hymn singing. I know it must bring great delight to the Father’s ears! It certainly blesses all who pass by.
How grateful I am that I could observe such contentedness from those unable to DO anything that seems productive to my way of thinking. Just being who they were they brought joy to me.
One day I may find myself unable to serve the Lord by doing. I may find myself confined to a bed with nothing to do but look out a window. Should that day come, I trust the Lord will bless me with the grace needed to be content to enjoy and worship Him alone and bring joy to those around me.
In the meantime, I need to practice finding my contentment in Jesus alone. If the Apostle Paul, and Miss Moxey, and Garvin, and Arthur can learn it, then I guess I can too. I will have all of August, and the rest of my life, to do so. May I learn the lesson of contentment as well as they have, and may my contentment give Jesus joy.
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