Contentment

February 5, 2020

“LORD, my heart is not haughty, Nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, Nor with things too profound for me. Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother; Like a weaned child is my soul within me.” —Psalms 131:1-2

Every so often in the seven years I’ve been focusing on gratitude, it feels like somehow I’m shirking my duty. People all over the country have been obsessing for the past three years over our president. The Democrats can’t stand him, and take every opportunity to castigate and vilify him, while his supporters vow to stand by him no matter what. Our elected representatives have chosen to abdicate the business of representation in favor of internecine fighting that is so partisan that it almost amounts to open warfare. The media fuel the frenzy and we are now in the beginning stages of an election cycle that has all the earmarks of further polarizing the country, if that is even possible. 

Through all this, I find myself steadily withdrawing from the fray, narrowing my focus to the things I can at least somewhat control. As the psalmist says, “Neither do I concern myself with great matters.” Therein lies the nexus of my occasional twinges of guilt. Shouldn’t I be concerned with such weighty matters? Is it an abdication of my civic duty to let others slug it out? 

Whenever I begin to wander down that rabbit trail, I return to this psalm. I learned long ago that posting things on Facebook is merely preaching to the choir. People who agree with you will hit “like,” while those who disagree want to pick an argument with you. No one’s mind gets changed because everyone there is actually Faceless. We aren’t interacting with real flesh and blood people, with the result that we abandon civility. After all, we don’t have to face that person we’re trash-talking at work the next day.

So I write about the blessings I’ve noticed, the human kindness I see, the beauty all around me, and sometimes about my struggles with faith—not great and lofty matters, but they are what matters to me. George Washington Carver once prayed that God would reveal to him secrets of the universe. “God said to me, ‘Why not try the peanut? It’s more your size,’” he recalled. He went on to discover scores of uses for the lowly peanut. I can’t even claim that, but I can claim a calm soul and a peaceful heart, the product of directing my attention away from the worries and cares of this life and towards the heart and mind of Christ.