Seasons In The Abyss
In conversing with The Wife an interesting topic came up the other night. We were talking about contentment versus "happiness" in an unpleasant situation and I put forth a side thought to which The Wife said, "Write that down!" so I shall, and expand upon it a bit.
The basic idea is that if we do not learn contentment in the here and now, in the midst of unpleasant circumstances, how will we ever appreciate the finality of a better eternity? Until we learn that contentment is a choice and "happiness" is fleeting we are forever striving to find a better place in life and often looking back on what we supposed at the time to be bad places, and realizing we should have been content.
We spend so much of our lives looking through the lenses of the temporal at eternal things. We confuse trivialities for important issues, and eternal issues behind the facade of the temporal are so rarely exposed for the important things they are. One of the greatest mistakes we can make is allow the incrementalism of the world to invade our perceptions, and cause us to diminsh that which should be foremost for that which should diminish. So we find ourselves getting wrapped up in petty issues of comfort, appreciation of others toward us, accolades, percieved slights and the common tensions of interpersonal relations.
I believe we are often kept in places of discomfort in our lives so that we may learn and grow in them. If we are forever trying to escape to a place of comfort, we never learn and thus look back on years of waste and wonder why we kept ending up in the same scenarios, with just different names on the same characters.
Happiness does not mean contentment, and they are often mutually exclusive. Contentment is however, a sign of maturity, and happiness is so fleeting that is not a valuable measure of anything. Like any good parent our Father desires that we be whole, complete and mature. As a result He would far rather us be content than happy, and will go to any end to teach us so. How much greater our reward will be if we can actually comprehend and appreciate it when we are there.
Time to get on to the friction of the day.
The basic idea is that if we do not learn contentment in the here and now, in the midst of unpleasant circumstances, how will we ever appreciate the finality of a better eternity? Until we learn that contentment is a choice and "happiness" is fleeting we are forever striving to find a better place in life and often looking back on what we supposed at the time to be bad places, and realizing we should have been content.
We spend so much of our lives looking through the lenses of the temporal at eternal things. We confuse trivialities for important issues, and eternal issues behind the facade of the temporal are so rarely exposed for the important things they are. One of the greatest mistakes we can make is allow the incrementalism of the world to invade our perceptions, and cause us to diminsh that which should be foremost for that which should diminish. So we find ourselves getting wrapped up in petty issues of comfort, appreciation of others toward us, accolades, percieved slights and the common tensions of interpersonal relations.
I believe we are often kept in places of discomfort in our lives so that we may learn and grow in them. If we are forever trying to escape to a place of comfort, we never learn and thus look back on years of waste and wonder why we kept ending up in the same scenarios, with just different names on the same characters.
Happiness does not mean contentment, and they are often mutually exclusive. Contentment is however, a sign of maturity, and happiness is so fleeting that is not a valuable measure of anything. Like any good parent our Father desires that we be whole, complete and mature. As a result He would far rather us be content than happy, and will go to any end to teach us so. How much greater our reward will be if we can actually comprehend and appreciate it when we are there.
Time to get on to the friction of the day.
posted by PipeRain at 8:17 PM
1 Comments:
nicely said. wish I had read this before now....
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