I don’t know if you know this, but I like telling stories. Stories tend to unite cultures and people under the same goal. They can be for entertainment, cultural knowledge, moral messages or even just a funny story. For some of us, stories get our thinking gears going and for me, they help me put things in perspective with a different light. Some stories make me reflect on relationships I have or have lost. Stories even make me feel how important my ancestry is. They even show how God through the Holy Spirit can teach me something new about me. To make a long story short …LOL (no pun intended)… Stories are just fun. So, here is one that I pray will help you reflect on some things as it did for me.
The story is about a farmer who has lived on the same farm all his life. It was a good farm with fertile soil, but with the passing of years, the farmer began to think, “Maybe there is something better for me.” He set out to find an even better plot of land to farm.
Every day as time went on he found a new reason for criticizing some features of his old farm. Finally one day, he decided to sell. He listed the farm with a real estate broker who promptly prepared an advertisement emphasizing all the many advantages of the acreage: ideal location, modern equipment, healthy stock, acres of fertile ground, high yields on crops, well-kept barns, pens, and a nice two-story house on the hill above the pasture.
When the real estate agent called to read the ad to the farmer for his approval before placing it in the local paper, the farmer heard him out. When the broker had finished, the farmer started to cry. He said: “Hold everything! I have changed my mind. I am not going to sell.”
“Why?” the broker asked.
The farmer replied, “I’ve been looking for a place just like that all my life!”
We often overlook the treasure in what we already have while searching for something better.
Let us all focus and be thankful not just for what we have, which can include our family, big or small, close or far, our job or the promise of the job, that one special friend or friends, or our health or the improvement of it. We can all make a list of our “old farm” and when we list its qualities, we realize that it is exactly what we need. And in that same spirit of thankfulness, let’s also be thankful for the greatest gift we can have and that is a relationship with our Creator, the one who “[f]or everything comes from Him and exists by His power and is intended for His glory. All glory to Him forever! Amen” (Rom.11-36 NLT).
Contentment isn’t getting what we want but being satisfied with what we have.
Contentment is a matter of accepting from God’s hand what He sends because we know that He is a good God and wants to give good gifts to His children. We accept, therefore, from God’s hand all that HE provides. All that we need HE will supply – even pain and suffering that apparently cannot be corrected, HE can redeem. Contentment is the fruit of a relationship with Christ and it’s possible in any situation.
Philippians 4:11–13 teaches us that true contentment is possible. Being content in every moment, regardless of our circumstances, is possible for us in Christ. This kind of contentment doesn’t come from outside of us. It doesn’t come from our circumstances. It comes from inside of us – from Christ in us.
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