If you’re not content, are you really thankful?

Besides too much food and a lot of football, Thanksgiving Day brings with it a unique tension — a measure of whether we’re really content.

If we’re not content with our lives, are we really thankful?

Some people find Thanksgiving Day a deeply moving experience; as they gather with people they love the most, they think about what each relationship means to them and how God has papered their lives with love from Him and others. Such reflection brings about a heartfelt conviction that they are truly blessed, and they feel deeply content.

Others are watching the clock.

They’re counting down the hours before they can seem to justify running out to join the crowds for Black Friday’s maddening dive into consumerism. If they aren’t shopping for themselves, they’re buying all the stuff they believe others need to make them a little more content.

The modern tension we experience on Thanksgiving Day is between meditating on our blessings, which should render us more than content, and the temptation to splurge in retail delights that lure us with those ridiculously tempting sales Black Friday spawns.

Do you have what you need, or don’t you?

That should be a straightforward question, shouldn’t it? But we’ve reached a time in our culture when some would answer such a question like this: “Yes, but what does that have to do with contentment?”

Is having what you need no longer enough to make you content? Does it take more than that?

For some, it does, as Jonathan Alexander contrasts in this writing …

One of my favorite books is Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited. It’s a novel written in dramatic form (feels like a screen play). It captures the conversation of two characters: Black and White. Black is a recovered addict and former inmate who found Jesus, and White is an atheist professor who tries to kill himself.

The whole book is a conversation in Black’s kitchen after he’s rescued White from a failed suicide attempt. The conversation ultimately is a theological one that centers on the hope or hopelessness with or without God in the equation of life. And it’s written in McCarthy’s terse, sparse language that gets straight to the heart.

Here’s one of my favorite points of dialogue:

Black: If this ain’t the life you had in mind, what was?

White: I don’t know. Not this. Is your life the one you’d planned?

Black: No, it ain’t. I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that’s just about the best kind of luck you can have.

When our wants exceed the satisfaction of having what we need, we remain discontent.

So what’s the formula for cultivating an authentic contentment? The Apostle Paul broaches that subject when writing to his young son in the faith, Timothy …

“Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content,” 1 Timothy 6:6-8.

So when Thanksgiving Day finally arrives this month, and we find ourselves being disciples of Jesus Christ who are saved by grace through faith, and that we also have all our basic needs like enough food and clothing, well, we’ll truly be content.

Right?

Scotty