Do You Picture Contentment Like This?

What do you picture contentment as? Perhaps it's a serene beach vista, or a comfortable reclining chair and a novel, or a nap after lunch. Actually, spiritual contentment has no sedentary connotations. Jeremiah Burroughs startled me with this aspect of spiritual contentment:

 We should prize duty more highly than to be distracted by every trivial occasion Indeed, a Christian values every service of God so much that though some may be in the eyes of the world and of natural reason a slight and empty business, beggarly elements, or foolishness, yet since God calls for it, the authority of the command so overawes his heart that he is willing to spend himself and to be spent discharging it.... And if this is so, and a Christian knows it, he should not be diverted by small matters, but should answer every distraction, and resist every temptation.
-The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment,23.

So spiritual contentment includes being willing and cheerful to fulfill all the work that God gives to us. Contentment is not only resting in God (it is that), but it is a doing of God's work that rests in His wisdom in setting before us each task. Shirking duty is not only disobedience toward God, but unbelief in the grace he has promised to meet us in our duties.

Here is how Paul puts it: "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work" (2 Corinthians 9:8). Rest in that grace, and, while resting there, be busy about the Lord's business.