First of all, I have a lot to be grateful for. God has tremendously blessed me with many things. I have a wonderful family and a wonderful church family as well. I could make a long list of things God has blessed me with. And I truly think I am grateful for all of this.
Secondly, I know all of us have our share of difficulties. No one is going to be exempt from hardship. To think I have not experienced hardship in any major degree lately is a lot to be thankful for. Some people have such difficult problems, that I can't even imagine how hard they would be.
Thirdly, where does my satisfaction come from? Does is primarily come from God? Or does it come primarily from His blessings? God is the only One who can truly satisfy a person's soul, but even though that is true, we look for happiness and satisfaction in every place but in God. We are sold on the devil's lie that God is not good and that He is not to be trusted. We see people with things we would like to have. We think we will be happy with those things. We would be happy for a short time, but, in the end, we won't be satisfied. We will look for something else to make us happy.
A couple of months ago, I was making pasta with a pasta attachment to my mixer. This attachment costs around $200 and I have used it a lot. I depend upon this attachment to make pasta using pure flour and ingredients in place of buying store bought boxed pasta. One evening while I was making pasta, my plastic spoon got stuck in the shaft. I couldn't believe it really happened. I knew it was the end of my pasta making attachment and right after it happened, I was beside myself. I was tempted to start using bad language. I was tempted to yell and openly become angry. I panicked and went to the computer to tell all my Facebook friends what had happened. Maybe they would join in with my pity party.
It took a little while, but as I pondered this situation, I remembered that God is sovereign over every situation in my life. I left to go to a party, while my husband worked on getting the plastic spoon out of the shaft of the pasta attachment. To look at the combination, it looked hopeless. I resolved myself to the fact that God will work out whatever will happen to the pasta attachment. So be it if I have to throw it away. I won't be able to get another one for a long time, but, it will be ok. If I have it, I'll be grateful. If I don't have it, I will be grateful for the time I did have it.
Surprise, when I came home, my husband had fixed it. The pasta machine was back in working order. The spoon had to be cut in half though. But this episode was a good test to see what was in my heart and what I would be tempted with should something I use be taken away from me.
Now I have another difficulty. It might not ever be resolved. My husband gave me a gift card to a store, and when I went to apply it, all it gave me was an invalid error message. I tried several times. I contacted the company and they tried to get the gift card to work, but were unsuccessful. I really depended on that gift card to buy certain items. It was worth a lot of money, but now it is useless. How am I going to respond? All the items I put into the cart will have to wait now. I will have to learn to be content with what God gives me, or what He doesn't give me. I will have to learn that I am not 'entitled' to things.
God wants us to learn self control, and puts us in situations which try us and help us to grow. But I think God also wants us to turn to Him to find satisfaction. Living in America makes it hard to find satisfaction in God, because we have so many other distractions and false promises of things that will make us 'happy'. God doesn't give us things so we can become wrapped up in them. He wants to give us Himself. Why do we look for happiness in all the wrong places?
"...for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the
fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken
cisterns that can hold no water." Jeremiah 2:13 ESV
"On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood
and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come
to me and drink. Whoever believes in
me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom
those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had
not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified." John 7:37 ESV
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| Pasta machine attachment with plastic spoon after being rescued from destruction. |
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