Today’s Lectionary Readings: Psalm 131; Genesis 2:4-25; Matthew 18:1-9; Philemon 15-25; Psalm 19
Usually when I’m reading scripture, there is a theme or a piece of a story that jumps out and catches my attention. Today it was neither of those things. Today, it was simply one word. That word that caught my attention was from Psalm 131:2; it was the word “content” (as paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message). Let me tell you why that word jumped out at me. Those of us who are Americans live in a society that teaches us to live with one eye constantly on the future. When we are in school getting an education, for instance, we are told to be thinking about what you will do with that education once you get out of school. Once you do get out of school and land your first job, society then tells us we need to be thinking about our career and the paths to professional growth and promotions. After several promotions, we are then encouraged to start preparing for retirement and our golden years. I used a vocational model here to prove my point but the same could be said of our personal development as well (i.e. we go from being single, to dreaming of meeting a partner, to dreaming of getting married, to dreaming of starting a family, to dreaming of buying our first home…). My point is this: the notion of being content exactly where we are at any given notion is a foreign notion to many of us. Some of us are even taught to equate contentedness with laziness or settling. How sad! Today, let us reclaim a bit of the spirit the psalmist wrote of when he wrote: “Like a baby content in its mother’s arms, my soul is a baby content” (Psalm 131:2 – The Message). May it be so - today and all days. Til next time…
Usually when I’m reading scripture, there is a theme or a piece of a story that jumps out and catches my attention. Today it was neither of those things. Today, it was simply one word. That word that caught my attention was from Psalm 131:2; it was the word “content” (as paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in The Message). Let me tell you why that word jumped out at me. Those of us who are Americans live in a society that teaches us to live with one eye constantly on the future. When we are in school getting an education, for instance, we are told to be thinking about what you will do with that education once you get out of school. Once you do get out of school and land your first job, society then tells us we need to be thinking about our career and the paths to professional growth and promotions. After several promotions, we are then encouraged to start preparing for retirement and our golden years. I used a vocational model here to prove my point but the same could be said of our personal development as well (i.e. we go from being single, to dreaming of meeting a partner, to dreaming of getting married, to dreaming of starting a family, to dreaming of buying our first home…). My point is this: the notion of being content exactly where we are at any given notion is a foreign notion to many of us. Some of us are even taught to equate contentedness with laziness or settling. How sad! Today, let us reclaim a bit of the spirit the psalmist wrote of when he wrote: “Like a baby content in its mother’s arms, my soul is a baby content” (Psalm 131:2 – The Message). May it be so - today and all days. Til next time…
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