Contentment

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.

Matthew 26:7

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….

Advertisements