Following on from my thoughts yesterday about contentment and enjoying riches, this passage in Eccl really made me think-
“Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil this is the gift of God.” Eccl 5:18-19
The ESV footnote has “see good” in place of “find enjoyment” and it struck me how intwined those ideas are. We will only find joy when we make the decision to look for the good in life. Are you a the glass is half full or half empty person? God intends for us to be happy and gives us many opportunities in a given day to find that joy. Kids are great at doing this, and if you have a family why not spend today trying to see your world through their eyes. The wonder, the pleasure, the games. The way a bit of rubbish can be transformed into a car, or baby. These things are great. My youngest son Joel gives us a lot of joy at the moment as he is beginning to talk a lot more- but if we focussed only on what he did wrong we would miss it as he is also a demolisher.
What do you focus on? Do you see the happy things that are happening in your life or only the sad?
Of course this fits in quite nicely with my blogging challenge, which remains very much still open. I have had a couple of other entries. One advocating “small groups” instead of church. I can never understand why some people seem to feel that they need to leave the organised church to find honest christianity. Often I wish you could all come to the great london church that I attend.
Meanwhile Tim Plett says
To be a Christian hedonist is to be absolutely, utterly God saturated in my thinking and in my meditations and in my prayers and in my songs, and, perhaps even in my sorrows. To be a Christian is to know that God is better than any thing else life could offer. So I need to bring the gospel to the lost and broken because God is good, and He is satisfying.
So I worship Him, starting now and continuing through eternity, because God is satisfying. And so I obey because I know that–even when obedience is dreadfully hard–that at the end of the day I can say my happiness is in God. I want a heart that is satisfied with God every day. I want a heart that is happy with God.
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