A year of purposeful contentment

A word for the year, a new year, perhaps a year where I turn a bit more intentional about life.

I try to take in the lessons God gives me from so many places. The Word, a note, a sermon, a friend, even my children. All these things to focus on, to work on in my life. Isn't that what it is all about, becoming more like Christ? But then life happens, it just happens. Even if I just sit there and try to think about something God is teaching me, life is still happening all around me. It won't stop for me, I'll just loose more time to do it...whatever it is.

How am I to plan this then? Can you plan the movement of the Spirit in your soul? Can the lesson wait until I have time to think on it? Not when the children are calling and laundry is piling and dust is settling in (and growing). Not when the sacred moments are so often the unplanned moments, a smile, a comment, a thought like a breeze, a glimps of real life.

I wrestle with contentment in these things. If I had more time to teach them, to hold him, to clean that or fix this; to fix me. If I didn't have to work, if we could have learned to live on less, make a different choice, have a different dream...dismiss a calling. Oh, God sighs at my wrestling sometimes...

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.
Isaiah 30:14-16

Salvation through rest? Growing closer to God while being quiet? Contentment in where I am, trust for where I am going...

"Contentment isn't a state of organization, a weight on the scale, a state of better: better kids, better marriage, better health, better house. Contentment is never a matter of circumstances; contentment is always a state of communion — a daily embracing of God. A thankfulness for all the gifts – and moments and life, just as He gives it. Trying harder may only bring harder trials and contentment, it won’t be be found in the resolutions, but in the revolutions – in the turning round to God." -Ann Voskamp

Trying harder may only bring harder trials...

So the year is purposeful contentment, purposeful rest, purposeful quietness. It may be that God will work out in me what is best for me, when I quit trying to grasp a fleeting moment of inspiration and just love the feel of it across my soul.