Proverbs 15:15 ESV
All the days of the afflicted are evil, but the cheerful of heart has a continual feast.
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Contentment is a virtue hard to find and harder to hold onto. We humans are a naturally discontent people, wanting this and bewailing that with habitual regularity. I do it, you do it, we all do it. We can find any excuse to be miserable, any excuse to be unhappy. The circumstance isn’t what we’re used to, it’s too much what we’re used to, it’s uncomfortable, it’s never going to last, etc. All earthly pleasures avail nothing to make us content. God knows this, of course; He made us. He gives us a better option, the only true path to contentment.
We cannot be permanently content on the basis of this world alone. Pleasure is all very well, for a time, but we get tired, realize there is indeed an end to variety. Hard work is fulfilling, but at some point it needs a purpose outside itself. Virtue is a good idea, but virtue for the sake of virtue isn’t just exhausting, it’s impossible. Nothing in this life can be the anchor for a equilibrium of contentment because everything in this life, including we ourselves, undergoes change. We need something solid and unchanging to be our anchor.
God alone does not change. As Hebrews 13:8 states, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” How, though, are we to be content in Him? He may not change, but that doesn’t automatically give us contentment. In other words, how do we take the fact of His immutability and turn that into the ‘cheerful heart’ that grants a ‘continual feast’? This is contentment, continual cheerfulness of heart; if God is to be the basis for our cheerfulness, how? Why should the existence of God give us joy?
For the wicked, it doesn’t. Why should the unrighteous man be cheerful? God reigns, and God’s wrath is a terrible thing to face. The wicked man has no refuge in Him, lives in perpetual violation of His commandments, lives in constant violation of the image of God in himself. He is therefore afflicted of heart’, knowing at the end of the day that all the comforts he has are passing, that the center of his life is rotten and broken. Sin breeds misery in the sinner as well as the sinned against. Even what comforts he can bring himself by worldly superficialities can last at most only till death, till the final judgement, till the everlasting fire.
For the righteous, though, God is an ever-present comfort. Psalm 91 puts it well: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust” (1-2). The righteous can rest in God, can turn to Him for eternal security. He does not change or turn from His protection; He does not renege on His covenant. Those whom He saved from sin He will preserve. The Chirstian will be battered, bruised, and broken, but he will be saved, will have at the core of his life the hand of God which will heal every ill.
Nor does the cheer God brings to the Christian stop at mere security and healing. God’s glory is declared by His word and His Spirit in our lives at all times. Be we but willing to see it, we have a continual fountain of delight in Him. Christ died for our sins; Christ gave us His righteousness. Thus, were we to see clearly, we would have in Him unconquerable joy. We have a relationship with the King of all creation, a relationship with the Creator of all, are loved by Him so that we cannot but love Him. His glory, His beauty, His strength, these are the Christian’s joy, when he opens his eyes.
It is this relationship which is the basis of the wise man’s cheerfulness. He is not cheerful because of his own self, not truly. He is filled instead with the joy of the truth, with gratitude towards the Almighty. Even in the deepest, darkest, realest pain- death, perhaps, or the apostacy of a loved one- the wise man has this cornerstone: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).
God bless.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
