Stuffed or Starving

Thanksgiving is a time for overeating.  I make it my annual goal to eat my age in helpings.  This becomes more and more difficult every year, but I think I’m up to the challenge.  At Thanksgiving we fill our plates with more food than we would normally consume in an entire day, and then we have dessert.  On Thanksgiving we enjoy living with plenty.

But not every day is Thanksgiving.  There are days where we have to scrounge, where life moves so fast or the finances are so tight that a meal consists of whatever we grabbed at the convenience store.  And even though the meal we scarfed down didn’t quite fill us, we push through until the next meal because we have learned to live on less if need be.

Paul talks about this in Philippians 4, where he says that He has learned to live with plenty and with less.  He says that in either situation he is content.  And then he says something that as a church we have latched onto but often lost sight of the context.  He says that he can “do all things through Christ” (Phil 4:13).  Often when we think about this verse we think about dealing with persecution or making a tough decision.  But Paul says that the only thing that has allowed him to be content in his life, the only thing that has led him to real peace or happiness, is Christ.  He didn’t start out content; he says he learned it by going through times that were difficult.  When we face moments of unhappiness with our situations in life, go back to this verse and be reminded that this is exactly what Paul experienced and it was what brought him to a deeper relationship with his Savior and a true sense of contentment.