Author: Silva

Fear, Blessing and Contentment

Silva

Fear and Contentment

If you tune into the weather today, you’ll no doubt notice that our country’s eastern seaboard mid-section is about to get creamed again by another snow storm.  Weather is always one of those things that raises everyone’s level of discontent: my niece and nephews are perfectly content with that pile of snow about to hit.  No school, more snow-ball fights, hot chocolate as far as the eye can see….Now their mother is not likely to share all of their excitements or their enthusiasm.  She digs the snow, but no one digs it like kids.

We get spared from the snow around here and that’s a source of content and discontent, too.  (I’m happy as a clam to avoid it; my kids, predictably, aren’t.)  Weather is a gift of God for a lot of reasons but one of them surely is so we can practice contentment.  Believers in Christ would give the north-south on whether they should be content, “Of course, we should be.”  The question is, “How?”

Fear is the key to contentment.  Once, when strength and vigor were mine in abundance (ahem), I was standing on an airbase tarmac with a parachute strapped to my back.  Anyone who knows will tell you that it is STRAPPED to you – around the waist, through the legs, over the shoulders, across the chest.  No one should be allowed to stand in that condition for very long; it is profoundly uncomfortable.  Yet, the fear of great injury that might’ve resulted if it hadn’t been as tight as it needed to be resulted in my contentment.

The fear of the Lord is the key to godly contentment.  This is different than the base-servile fear that comes with a parachute.  This kind of fear leads to a kind of life where blessings come and contentment follows.  But is all starts with fear.

The psalmist writes (128:1-2) “Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways!  You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed and it shall be well with you.”  Notice the relationship between fear and blessing?  Press ahead to Psalm 131 and you have one who is greatly content:

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.  But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.

We look in vain for contentment outside of the fear of the Lord.  Fear Him first and the rest will surely follow.

You with Us, We with You

Silva

I continue to be provoked by a discussion about parenting in light of eternity.  The affect it has had on me as a parent has been to clarify the things of parenting.  I will (and do!) still struggle in making mountains out of molehills and vice versa, but I definitely believe that the picture of my destination as a parent is clearer – under the specter of eternal judgment, all things are clearer.  Interestingly, Paul wrote this way in his letter to the Thessalonians (1:9, 2:16, 3:13, 4:13-17, chapter 5).

Just the other day, I found out that one of my children had been participating in mean-spiritedness against another child from our church: covenant children victimizing others, who’d have thought?  Nonetheless, once I found out I was surprised by how much more quickly we moved to handle this (Judgment day still fresh in our minds).  I whipped out the church directory, found the relevant phone number, made the call, connected with the parent and passed the phone along to my child who asked for forgiveness from the other.  The mom told me that my child had acted courageously.  I responded, “It takes courage to do the right thing.”  I might’ve said it differently, “It takes a Judgment-Day perspective to do the right thing.”

In a resource designed to help parents bring the gospel to their covenant children, I read a quote from Richard Mather, English-born American congregationalist preacher (c. 1600) in answer to the question, “What might covenant children on their way to hell say to their parents?”

All this that we here suffer is through you.  You should have taught us the things of God and did not.  You should have restrained us from sin and corrected us and you did not.  You were the means of our original corruption and guiltiness, and yet you never showed any competent care that we might be delivered from it.  Woe unto us that we had such carnal and careless parents.  And woe unto you that you had no more compassion and pity to prevent the everlasting misery of your own children.

I have said in class before that even among those of you who do not have children, your commitment to your covenantal vows at the many baptisms you witnessed in our worship obligate you to help parents with children in their tasks of parenting for Judgment Day.  I pray that in and through our faithful covenant parenting (you with us and we with you) in light of eternity, our children will have no opportunity to speak words like these.  May God grant us the grace and strength.

Pastor Gabe