Contentment

May this encourage your soul as it did mine... It's from Spurgeon...

"I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances." Philippians 4:11

"These words show us that contentment is not a natural propensity of man. "Bad weeds grow in haste" Covetousness, discontent, and murmuring are as natural to man as thorns are to the soil. We needn't sow thistles and brambles; they come up naturally enough, because they are indigenous to the earth; and so, we needn't teach men to complain; they complain fast enough without any education. But the precious things of the earth must be cultivated. If we would have wheat, we must plow and sow; if we want flowers, there must be the garden, and all the gardner's care. Now, contentment is one of the flowers of heaven, and, if we would have it, it must be cultivated. It will not grow in us by nature; it is the new nature alone that can produce it, and even then we must be especially careful and watchful that we maintain and cultivate the grace which God has sown in us. Paul says, "I have learned to be content;" as much as to say, he didn't know how at one time. It cost him some pains to attain to the mystery of that great truth. No doubt he sometimes thought he had learned, and then broke down. And when at last he had attained to it, and could say, "I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances," he was an old gray-haired man, upon the borders of the grave-a poor prisoner shut up in Nero's dungeon at Rome. We might well be willing to endure Paul's infirmities, and share the cold dungeon with him, if we, too, might by any means attain to his good measure. Don't indulge the notion that you can be contented with learning, or learn without discipline. It is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually. We know this from experience. Brother and sister, hush that complaint, as natural as it is, and continue as a diligent scholar in the College of Content."