Contentment

Heavenly Father, if I should suffer need, and be in poverty, make my heart prize Your love, know it, be constrained by it. It is Your mercy to allow affliction, to mold me. By these trials I see my sins. Let me willingly accept misery, sorrows, and temptations, if by them I can realize sin as the greatest evil, and be delivered from it with gratitude, acknowledging this as the highest testimony of Your love.

When Your Son, Jesus Christ, came into my soul, His kindly rule replaced sin’s tyranny. Teach me to believe that if I would ever have sin subdued I must not only labor to overcome it, but must invite Christ to abide in the place of it. When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me by showing me that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch, but in Christ I am reconciled and live. That in myself I find insufficiency and no rest, but in Christ there is satisfaction and peace. In myself I am feeble and unable to do good, but in Christ I have ability to do all things. Though now I have His graces in part, I shall soon have them perfectly, fully reconciled, and alone sufficient, loving me completely, with sin abolished. O Lord, hasten the day.

Adapted, The Valley of Vision

Note: Contentment, n: a state of mind in which one’s desires are confined to his/her lot whatever it may be; an inner peace resulting from humility, and from an understanding of the basic goodness of God’s plan, the greatness of His promises, our own unworthiness, and of the knowledge that we have eternal life through Jesus Christ. Contentment is the opposite of envy, greed, pride, anxiety, and fretful complaining.