Thought for the week

WHAT does it mean to be content? Dictionaries inform us that it is a ‘state of peaceful happiness’ and ‘a state of satisfaction.’

Achieving such a state of being, having peace and satisfaction, both sounds wonderful and also strangely unachievable. Whilst the search for contentment has always been part of religious and spiritual reflection it can seem that the modern world is against us. Everything can seem so busy and noisy with demands coming from every angle that being content can seem a distant hope.

Does contentment come from fulfilling your dreams and ambitions? Being successful can of course bring a kind of peace that you have fulfilled potential, but what happens if you don’t achieve what looks like success at least by the standards of the world? At the moment there is a lot of sport around with the Men’s Cricket world cup, the Women’s Football world cup and all the other sporting events that mark the summer. The drama of professional sport is a picture of success and failure where years of application and effort can count for nothing when the ball fails to go over the net or into the net!

The 1990s film ‘Cool Runnings’ uses the story of the first Jamaican Olympic bobsled team and explores what success looks like. The coach in the story admits that despite gold medals he felt he was never enough, he was never content. Contentment the film suggests comes from respect for ourselves and those around us. In the Bible Jesus promises his disciples contentment and life lived to its fullest. This contentment comes from knowing what God thinks of us as revealed in the life of Jesus. Rob Beamish