I read this earlier this week:
I do not know
when I have had happier times
in my soul,
than when I have been sitting at work,
with nothing before me
but a candle and a white cloth,
and hearing no sound
but that of my own breath,
with God in my soul
and heaven in my eye…
I rejoice in being exactly what I am –
a creature capable of loving God,
and who, as long as God lives,
must be happy.
I get up
and look for a while out of the window,
and gaze at the moon and stars,
the work of an Almighty hand.
I think of the grandeur of the universe,
and then sit down,
and think myself
one of the happiest beings in it.
A POOR METHODIST WOMAN, 18TH CENTURY.
Then today I read Matthew 26:7:
7 While He was at Simon’s house, a woman came to see Him. She had an alabaster flask of very valuable ointment with her, and as Jesus reclined at the table, she poured the ointment on His head.
I can’t help thinking that if the woman writing the first piece had been able to get to Simon’s house she would also have poured out all she had on the head of her Lord.
There’s a contentment in both of these women. They knew the value of what they had spiritually and materially and that the one far out-weighed the other.
Contentment to sit and breathe and be in His presence.
Contentment to offer the most valuable thing she had to honour Him.
Contentment in being who they were knowing Him.
The first writer is an anonymous woman content to be known as a poor methodist. The second an anonymous woman forever known as the woman with the alabaster jar.
Contentment. Strangely something to pursue….
ahhh….contentment is a very good thing.
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The anonymity of true contentment; now that would be the best of all.
To be content to pour one’s love entirely on Him and to know oneself truly loved.
How could we then long for the recognition and praise we waste so much of our life seeking.
A beautiful study today.
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