Stuffed!

Weight has always been an issue for me. Until recently, I joked about my five years of "body bliss" between the ages of 17-22. Then, relaxing into life, I became complacent about body stewardship and the numbers on the scale increased again. The last two years, God has been teaching me obedience and contentment as it relates to body care. And I have found that contentment is often unaddressed in the Christian environment--especially in America.

We eat the wrong food because we are discontent with the right foods. We amass more and more possessions because we are discontent with the ones we have. We fill the courts desiring more money, a different spouse, a sense of justice, discontent with the provision of God. If "the LORD is my portion," (Lamentations 3:24), why am I filling my bowl with so many other, useless things?

Even in the Church, our service is tainted by discontent. Some long to enlarge their boundaries, others desire a better gift. Some, in discontent and envy, refuse to serve at all. Yet "one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills" (1 Cor. 12:11). And should we wonder if Paul might have mistakenly attributed our specific giftings to God, he says later in the same passage, "But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired" (1 Cor. 11:18).

What is your gift or mode of service? If God has given it to you, specifically, to meet the needs of His Body, why are you discontent? What is that bowl in your figurative hands full of?


"Therefore I have hope in Him." (Lamentations 3:24)