Seeking contentment that quenches

Signs of a coming winter are everywhere. Black woolly bugs are venturing across the driveway the way Moses and the Hebrew slaves crossed the Red Sea. My car is crushing acorns under its tires as if they were a gravel road. And perhaps most concerning, my appetite is up and activity level is low. Winter is coming. You can feel it.

The great temptation with every season is to look forward to the next and miss the season you're in. Longing for summer, you can miss the joys of snow. Wishing for Christmas, the changes of fall are bypassed. Yearning for what you don't have can cause you to miss where you are.

Proverbs 13:25 says, "The righteous has enough to satisfy his appetite, but the belly of the wicked suffers want."

Hunger is a powerful force. When you are hungry, it is almost all you can think about. It consumes your thoughts, your emotions, how you respond. Whether physical hunger for food, hunger for emotional satisfaction, or hunger for power and influence, hunger is powerful. When you are hungry, all that matters is fixing that need -- no matter what it is you hunger for.

What the Bible says is that those who are righteous, those who have an appetite for God and the good things of God, are in possession of a satisfaction, a contentment that quenches -- verses those who continuously exist for their own self-interest are always in want.

Contentment and satisfaction bring us face to face with the reality that for our lives to have the meaning we desperately want, we must reach beyond our own existence. We are more than what we create or consume. After all, if humanity could be satisfied by fulfilling all of their desires at the moment they have them, then wars would cease, governments collapse and the superficial self-help industry implode.

The self, seeking its solitary interests, is always consuming and never fulfilled. The Bible reminds, though, that when God is our priority the things of this world grow strangely dim. When we hunger and thirst for Him, everything else seems small, and its true trivial nature is revealed.

God has crafted you for more than to create and consume no matter what season of life you are in. Do you continue to chase what is forever ellusive or do you embrace what is most terrifying; satisfaction in the Creator of all.

Robert Hurtgen is a husband, father, minister and writer. Read more of him at robhurtgen.wordpress.com.