Know anyone that has contentment? It’s just about impossible to find now a days. About everybody seems mad about something or some people and they want to start a war. What good will that do? Others are so distraught they are ready to jump off a tall building, bridge, or cliff. Still others want to go into a tall mountain cabin or in an underground tunnel with their “twenty-five year dehydrated food supply” and bottled water (even if there is a nuclear stack how long would they last without fresh air?) Kind of like the multi-covid mask method could kill some repertory prone problem people while another group wants to get the first Space X rocket to international space station. Eventually they would run out of supplies too. Can’t put out empty Wheaties Boxes for people to eat. It would not taste good!
My grandmother from Great Britain was a person loaded with contentment maybe because she grew up poor; immigrated to the U.S.A. and became a legal citizen. Later she married an alcoholic carpenter who only worked when he felt like it and broke the kids piggy banks to get money for alcohol. He was gone or in jail for weeks at a time; this was before welfare.
She did many kinds of house cleaning jobs to put food on the table for my mother with her two siblings in 1929 depression days; they even picked up coal from along the railroad tracks to heat the house. Lard sandwiches were common; eggs and meat were rare. One day nanny as we called these small hard working woman heard beautiful music coming out of a small church in Whitewater, Wisconsin; she drove in, she repented of her sins and trusted Jesus Christ as he Lord and Savior.
I only knew her in that new life. She loved Godly music and was always humming hymns and smiling which bothered my passive rebels heart and my Dad’s hard heart when she came to visit our dairy farm. Not once did she ever put down her alcoholic husband who cursed her and gave her grief and left many years before and died in TN.
She was always very thrifty and never had much, yet she gave to God and others generously. Paid for her mobile home, cash for her cars and tended a good size garden. My grandmother sang for many people’s weddings and faithfully attended Whitewater Wisconsin Bible Church. She read the Bible daily and prayed for all of her decedents, as a result, several of us grandchildren found the Savior Jesus.
Now I see why she could forgive a mean step father and alcoholic husband and anyone else. She had been forgiven herself by the Jesus who died on the cross for her sins and anyone who repents and believes that. She told others and us about Him. She was interested in the lives of many, taught Sunday school many years and sang in the choir. The Joy and contentment she had came from Jesus. She worked at 98 and a half years old nearly blind and deaf soon. Afterwards, the Lord took her home. An early troubled life that found the secret of contentment for over fifty years is only found in The Lord Jesus Christ. One of her favorite Bible verses was Philippians 4:11, “not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned in whatsoever state (condition rich, poor full or hungry, healthy or not) I am content.”
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