| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 18 |
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But what did St. Paul mean when he said, “I am content”? He certainly did not mean that he was satisfied. Contentment is not an indolent giving up to circumstances. It does not come through the dying out of desire and aspiration in the heart. There is a condition of mind which some people suppose to be devout submission to God’s will which is anything but Christlike. We are to make the most of our life. We are not to yield irresolutely and weakly to everything that opposes us. Ofttimes we are to resist and conquer what seem to be impossibilities. We are never to be satisfied with our attainments or achievements, however fine they may be. Satisfaction is undivine; it is a mark of death, not of life. St. Paul never was satisfied. He lived to the very last day of his life looking forward and not back — forgetting things behind and stretching forward to things yet before, eager to do more and achieve more. When he said he had learned to be content, he did not mean that he had ceased to aspire and strive.
The original word, scholars tell us, contains a fine sense which does not come out in the English translation. It means “self-sufficing.” St. Paul, as a Christian man, had in himself all that he needed to give him tranquility and peace, and therefore he was not dependent upon any external circumstances. Wherever he went, there was in him a competence, a fountain of supply, a self-sufficing. This is the true secret of Christian contentment, wherever it is found. We cannot make our own circumstances; we cannot keep away from our life the sickness, the pain, the sorrow, the misfortunes; yet as Christians we are meant to live in any and all experience in unbroken peace, in sweet restfulness of soul.
How may this unbroken content be obtained? St. Paul’s description of his own life gives us a hint as to the way he reached it. He says, “I have learned to be content.” It is no small comfort to us common people to get this from such a man. It tells us that even with him it was not always thus — that at first he probably chafed amid discomforts and had to “learn” to be contented in trial. It did not come naturally to him, any more than it does to the rest of us, to have peace in the heart in the time of external strife.
Nor did this beautiful way of living come to him at once, as a Divine gift, when he became a Christian. He was not miraculously helped to acquire contentment. It was not a special power or grace granted to him as an apostle. He tells us plainly in his old age that he had “learned” it. This means that he was not always able to say, “I am content in any state.” This was an attainment of his later years, and he reached it by struggle and by disciplen, by learning in the school of Christ, by experience, just as all of us have to learn it, if we ever do and as any of us may learn it, if we will.
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