A Flourishing Care for One Another
Beloved People of God,
When was the last time your life turned upside down? On the rollercoaster of life, it’s only a matter of time before we’re flipped again. Sometimes we can see it coming, but other times… not so much. Sometimes these experiences leave us feeling sick to our stomach, but other times they reorient us in ways we didn’t know we needed.
It’s the old adage: things work until they don’t. In life, we learn habits and rhythms and use them, not because they’re right, but because they work. But when the rollercoaster rolls and those old habits or ways of thinking don’t give us the same contentment that they once did, we’re left frustrated and annoyed. So much of childhood is set with old mindset habits. We grow up longing for the validation of others: pleased parents, approving teachers, and happy friends. We learn not to rock the boat, finding our value in these relationships. But then… middle school. We’ve all been there. It isn’t just that our hormones make us go crazy, but that the tried-and-true habits don’t produce the same contentment. Adolescence is where we start searching for new patterns and practices to feed the validation we needed, and this compounds over time.
We don’t want to be discontent, and rightly so! As people, made in the image of God, we are inherently communal. We want to live out what is eternally revealed in the triunity of the Godhead as the Father, Son, and Spirit are in everlasting contentment as our Lord God. We are naturally born with this spiritual longing to be right with God and those around us, and—try though we might—our old mindset can’t get us there. Settling for lesser versions of this, we give in to peer pressure and social norms which either dangerously feed our ego or painfully undermine it.
Through the spinning spirals of life, Paul discovered the way to contentment in every situation. True contentment doesn’t just happen. It is a learned skill and an attitude purposely put into practice. It’s the reverse of what we’ve learned because it’s fostered from the inside out—the opposite of our childhood experience. We experience contentment as we have the mind of Christ, setting our thoughts in discipleship and then living them out in community.
For Christ the King,
Brett