Читать книгу Mustard Seeds - Melissa Levi - Страница 36

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

Philippians 4:11

I was in the restroom at work the other day. I was trying to make some sense of my hair. One curl fell between my eyes and another stood tall and proud at the top of my head. As my frustration grew with the unruly locks, I was transported back to the late seventies. Back when everyone wanted to look like Marcia Brady: tan, lean and blonde. Nothing like me: freckled, chubby and frizzy. I have countless memories of screaming into my pillow, tears and afternoons with my head on the ironing board as my grandmother attempted home straightening. I really did hate my hair.

Yet it seems I might have been the only one. I have had complete strangers ask to touch my hair. I worked with one lady years ago that would bury her face in my hair and breathe it in. I have gotten some really strange requests and comments over the years concerning my mop. I never could understand how they would covet this mess that adorns the top of my head, but many do.

I was also reminded of a morning back in junior high when my friend Donna got on the bus. She had straight blonde hair and could have been a look alike for Marcia Brady. This particular morning, she sat down beside me with limp curls all through her hair.

“What have you done to your hair?” I exclaimed. “Do you like it? I wanted curls like you.”

Donna had slept all night on rollers trying to get her hair to curl…like mine. I could not believe that she would want my unruly locks. By the time we got to school, her curls had fallen out and her hair was almost as straight as always. She cried for the entire morning with disappointment.

I guess that is just human nature, we always want what someone else has, or what we cannot have. Contentment is a foreign concept to so many of us. The lack of contentment can lead to a very unhappy life. It is easy to look at what others have and ask why we don’t have the same, why do they have it and I do not. This attitude cheats us of the enjoyment of what we do have and breeds ungrateful insolence.

Paul understood the danger of this kind of thinking. He wrote about it to the believers. If anyone had the right to question and ask why, it was Paul. He was hated, pursued, imprisoned, shipwrecked, snake bit, beaten and much more throughout his career. However, through it all, he exercised contentment and thanksgiving for what he did have.

I do not mind telling you that if I had been in his situation, I do not know that I could have maintained contentment and gratefulness. I would have been asking a lot of whys.

And I do, but they are the wrong whys and whens. I should be thinking of what God wants me to learn from particular circumstances or what I am to share with others. I am sure that Paul could have asked: why I am I being subjected to imprisonment and beatings God if I am working for you? Instead, Paul knew that his circumstances were to be for the glory of the Lord and the extension of the Good News of Christ. It is the same in our lives. Our particular trials are not to be viewed as punishments or persecutions but an opportunity to learn something about ourselves, gain a new perspective or gain the empathy to help others in their time of need.

Contentment in all situations allows us to take the focus off of the condition and place it on Christ.