Learning to Be Content-

Philippians 4:12-14

"Actually, I don’t have a sense of needing anything personally. I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve 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. I don’t mean that your help didn’t mean a lot to me—it did. It was a beautiful thing that you came alongside me in my troubles."

So today the lesson plan for my Second Graders was on contentment.

It is so easy to either be disappointed by what we don't have or jealous of what someone else has and we don't. I find it ironic that this came on Mother's Day when some may be grieving as a result of not being with their kids or estranged in some fashion.

The lesson plan talked about how God gives us a box not for identity rather that those things we contain may be poured out to illustrate God's grace and the bigger plan He has for us. As a result I took a box, which my youngest son used to use as the house for his stuffed dog, and filled it with those things we may use as our identity and false security of contentment.

In the box I included items that people run to in order to find their identity with meaning. I included vitamins (health), camera (memories), a tape measure (our job), a iPad (knowledge) and a picture of my kids (family), but there is a bigger picture and it doesn't mean that these things are bad only that the are not our identity. We have been talking for weeks about being a Hope Dealer leading to the tee shirt. In being a Hope Dealer we can be poured out to give something of value to others (candy).

Where is your identity found? Is it in those things in your box or is it found in the hope we find in Christ? When we turn our focus on God we are able to be poured out to give to others and in return those things in our box find deeper meaning as our eyes are fixed on Christ.

Find your identity in Christ and all these things will be added to you!

CAL