When our children were younger, I used to marvel at their ability to find great value and significance in sunrise and sunset, growing vegetables, bugs and trees, music, friendship, rocky-bottomed lakes, changing seasons and small rituals. They say the world through a lens of wonder and contentment that made me yearn for such eyes to see this world. One of the kids used to holler, \u201cThanks, God!<\/em>\u201d anytime they saw something that delighted them. I laughed every time. \u201cThanks, God!<\/em>\u201d at the sight of a heron, at the stars, at a toasted marshmallow on a stick.<\/p>\n It reminded me of a passage Paul wrote to the church in Philippi: \u201cActually, I don\u2019t have a sense of needing anything personally. I\u2019ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I\u2019m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I\u2019ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Philippians 4:12 (MSG)<\/p>\n Those words have always stuck with me since they were small\u2014mainly because I knew I wasn\u2019t there yet. I always felt like I was striving for something more, needing more. In our western world, in our culture, even sometimes in our churches, we live lives consumed with acquiring stuff or experiences or accolades or influence to make us feel valuable or successful or powerful or loved. For me, it\u2019s never really been about money or \u201cstuff\u201d<\/strong><\/span> but I wanted to travel and I wanted to accomplish \u201cbig things\u201d for God to have my life matter. The idea of contentment seemed counter to these yearnings and yet there we were.<\/p>\n There is nothing like raising or spending time with children to make you rethink \u201cdoing big things\u201d for God.<\/p>\n So I used to read about Paul and his contentment, no matter his circumstances and think it was unattainable, something for the truly sainted. It only took me an embarrassing amount of years chasing it to finally lift up my eyes and read the words that immediately preceded that very verse: \u201cSumming it all up, friends, I\u2019d say you\u2019ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious\u2014the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Now that makes sense to me. How can you have contentment without gratitude?<\/em> And gratitude comes from filling your heart, your mind, your life with the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Perhaps my kids were so filled with wonder because they were oriented to gratitude first.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, and gracious aren\u2019t usually found at the mall or Amazon, they are unable to be bought or sold. And the discipline of gratitude can lead us back to contentment and wonder\u2014with choices, work, calling, experiences, home, family, our own journeys\u2014because there is such abundant life already here waiting for us.<\/p>\n So when I set aside the Big Evangelical Hero complex, when I began to practice what Paul said about gratitude, something odd happened: I began to feel wonder again. In the oddest places, in the simplest things, in the most ordinary and mundane moments. In the heft of a baby on my back, in the letting go of a small hand running into a classroom,<\/strong><\/span> in laughter over shared jokes, in made-up nonsense, in the kindness of people who love the Gospel towards \u201cthe least of these,\u201d in singing at church, in the night sky, in the black lace of the pines etched against a fading day, going for a walk, a good book, laughing at my husband piling leaves for the tinies to leap into<\/span><\/strong>. The science projects and snow days and sailing trips and millions and millions of other moments.<\/p>\n All of them make me want to mimic a long-ago toddler, \u201cThanks, God!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BY SARAH BESSEY, ACS PARENT When our children were younger, I used to marvel at their ability to find great value and significance in sunrise and sunset, growing vegetables, bugs and trees, music, friendship, rocky-bottomed lakes, changing seasons and small rituals. They say the world through a lens of wonder and contentment that made me […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":4891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,10],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-4889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elementary","category-faith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4889"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=4889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Striving and Needing More<\/h2>\n
The Best, Not the Worst<\/h2>\n
From Odd to Ordinary<\/h2>\n