If our contentment comes from possessions, activities, or other people, these can be altered or removed. If our contentment comes from our relationship with Christ, there is absolutely nothing that can take that away.
Paul had enjoyed power and status among his people. He had also been imprisoned and bound in stocks in the depths of a jail cell. He had stood before a king and been stoned almost to death by an angry mob. Paul had enjoyed the benefits and pleasures of life, yet he could give them all up and still be filled with the joy of the Lord. His contentment did not depend on his environment but on his relationship with Christ.
'I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.'
Philippians 4:11
Contentment frees you to enjoy every good thing God has given you. Contentment demonstrates your belief that God loves you and has your best interest in mind. Discontent stems from the sin of ingratitude and a lack of faith that God loves you enough to provide for all that you need. Strive to be grateful for all that God has given you. A grateful heart has no room for envy."
Henry Blackaby, Contentment
“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage."
Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, 1965
"Greed is not good. Greed is a disease, an aberration of simple honest ambition and necessary provision taken to excess. It is a sin, a transgression against love. This simple distinction may be lost on a people no longer able to distinguish between virtue and sin, honor and expediency, appetite and gluttony, the means and the ends.
And yet this generation would make a god of it, although they may not understand, or care, what it is that they are doing, and whom it is they serve. Greed, often in company with hubris and fear, is a handmaiden of the corrupting influence of power and triumph of the will. Greed is contagious, a disease of the heart, that attacks the very contentment of society, hardening it towards oligarchy and oppression."
Jesse, Greed Is Not Good, 19 December 2010
Stocks were the usual wobbly again, but managed to pull together a rally into the close.
VIX has continued to decline, and is now once again in the area where this stock bubble rally may be forced to pause.
Gold and silver attempted to rise and then fell back a bit again.
Did I mention that there is going to be a Non-Farm Payrolls report this Friday?
Have we forgotten the promise of an open, beautiful audit of the holdings of the official US gold reserves?
Appearance versus reality.
This is the key to all those pampered princes of power who have been rising from the darkness around the world.
Their appearance is all symbol and bluster, fueled by the mystique of passions and hate, reflecting a shallow lack of diligence and substance and competence.
Weighed, and found wanting.
But we have been here before.
We have seen seemingly irresistible groups which worship the land and the blood, full of fury against the innocent, ready to destroy liberty and all life in a fit of delusional pride.
And they eventually all fall away, unproductive and unworthy, unable to create, only destroy.
The children of desolation.
Our hope and our salvation lies in a different place, in the calm and loving heart of our Lord.
The sound and fury of the moment is passing, into the dust and the dirt of their vanities, the dry bones and corruption of a fallen world which fill their minds and their hearts.
The faithful gathered in their thousands, as millions more looked on from afar, to mark the passing of a kind and gentle shepherd, on the very hill where the most powerful man in the world had crucified his predecessor, upside down.
Ubi sunt? Sic transit gloria mundi.
Have a pleasant evening.
