Creating, collecting, and sharing thoughts and ideas. And learning along the way.
MORNING
“I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content.”
Philippians 4:11These words show us that contentment is not a natural propensity of man. “Ill weeds grow apace.” Covetousness, discontent, and murmuring are as natural to man as thorns are to the soil. We need not sow thistles and brambles; they come up naturally enough, because they are indigenous to earth: and so, we need not teach men to complain; they complain fast enough without any education. But the precious things of the earth must be cultivated. If we would have wheat, we must plough and sow; if we want flowers, there must be the garden, and all the gardener’s care.
Now, contentment is one of the flowers of heaven, and if we would have it, it must be cultivated; it will not grow in us by nature; it is the new nature alone that can produce it, and even then we must be specially careful and watchful that we maintain and cultivate the grace which God has sown in us. Paul says, “I have learned … to be content;” as much as to say, he did not know how at one time. It cost him some pains to attain to the mystery of that great truth. No doubt he sometimes thought he had learned, and then broke down. And when at last he had attained unto it, and could say, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content,” he was an old, grey-headed man, upon the borders of the grave–a poor prisoner shut up in Nero’s dungeon at Rome. We might well be willing to endure Paul’s infirmities, and share the cold dungeon with him, if we too might by any means attain unto his good degree.
Do not indulge the notion that you can be contented without learning, or learn without discipline. It is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually. We know this from experience. Brother, hush that murmur, natural though it be, and continue a diligent pupil in the College of Content.
EVENING
“Thy good Spirit.”
Nehemiah 9:20Common, too common is the sin of forgetting the Holy Spirit. This is folly and ingratitude. He deserves well at our hands, for he is good, supremely good. As God, he is good essentially. He shares in the threefold ascription of Holy, holy, holy, which ascends to the Triune Jehovah. Unmixed purity and truth, and grace is he. He is good benevolently, tenderly bearing with our waywardness, striving with our rebellious wills; quickening us from our death in sin, and then training us for the skies as a loving nurse fosters her child. How generous, forgiving, and tender is this patient Spirit of God.
He is good operatively. All his works are good in the most eminent degree: he suggests good thoughts, prompts good actions, reveals good truths, applies good promises, assists in good attainments, and leads to good results. There is no spiritual good in all the world of which he is not the author and sustainer, and heaven itself will owe the perfect character of its redeemed inhabitants to his work. He is good officially; whether as Comforter, Instructor, Guide, Sanctifier, Quickener, or Intercessor, he fulfils his office well, and each work is fraught with the highest good to the church of God. They who yield to his influences become good, they who obey his impulses do good, they who live under his power receive good. Let us then act towards so good a person according to the dictates of gratitude. Let us revere his person, and adore him as God over all, blessed forever; let us own his power, and our need of him by waiting upon him in all our holy enterprises; let us hourly seek his aid, and never grieve him; and let us speak to his praise whenever occasion occurs. The church will never prosper until more reverently it believes in the Holy Ghost. He is so good and kind, that it is sad indeed that he should be grieved by slights and negligences.
Kingsolver’s latest novel Flight Behavior transported me back to the mountains of Appalachia— to a small town in Tennessee that I’d spent many years in as a young woman. And through her protagonist, another young woman by the musical name of Dellarobia Turnbow, I was ushered into the life of small sheep farming community who find themselves in the midst of uncovering a most unusual and beautiful phenomenon on their mountainside: a multitude of monarchs that have migrated so far up north that it is nothing short of mysterious. Until, of course, it is discovered that this strange and breathtaking phenomenon might have nothing less than a very simple scientific basis to it: global warming.Â
With courage and skill, Kingsolver tells a story of epic proportions with a strong undercurrent of apocalyptic endings if this concept of climate change, also known as global warming is not studied and understood. But in the course of doing so, she introduces us to many a concept that is otherwise not spoken of too much:  the dire poverty and levels of illiteracy that generations of rural Americans seem to be steeped in; the prejudices of color and class that weigh in and take their toll on life and living every day; and the failing school systems that do not equip our youth for a future in higher education.
We hear Kingsolver’s sharp mind and reasoning reflected in Turnbow’s personality, and it is obvious that Turnbow despite her basic high school education who is married in a shotgun wedding at the age of seventeen, is also a kind of ecologist, concerned with the way she and the other members of her community adjust — or don’t — to their unusual circumstances. She forces us to ask of ourselves: what behavior is hard-wired? When and how do people have real choices? And how can we make a difference?
