Content with discontent

The wilderness of Paran, where Israel wandered for 40 years

If you know our story well, you know that stability has become sort of a novelty for us, surprising, rare, delightful.  It has come upon us so seldom in the past five years that its presence is surprising and not at all taken for granted.    It (stability) started happening a few months ago and I really thought we'd "arrived".  Finally we've landed in the promised land of stability, my heart starting thinking.  Yet once again, recent circumstances have ripped us right out of what I think of as my promised land and landed us back in the wilderness, groping, coping, and longing.

I am learning that stability is not my promised land.  This process is teaching me instead to be content with the discontent that life on earth brings.  I am learning to be sad over the brokenness of the now, while putting my hope not in the elusive over-promising and under-delivering "promised land" that I try to create on earth.

You see, we are all in the wilderness, longing for our promised land.  Whether it's the brokenness of a mind that causes chaos in a family, cancer, death, relational stress, our struggle against our sin or just the longing for more than this world can offer, we are aware that we are not home...

Yet God's presence is so real here in the wilderness.  As he led his people with the fiery cloud of his presence then, he so gently, yet powerfully leads me by his spirit and his word.  And he allows me fresh drinks from the ROCK of Christ when I am parched and languishing.  

Learning to hold all this in tension is taking time, but it's happening. He's teaching me how to be sad over the brokenness of our now, all the while joyfully partaking of his presence in the wilderness, and simultaneously longing to be fully in his presence, my true promised land.  I long for the redemption of our brokenness and sin, which has already begun. And more than those redemption stories being complete, there is a growing longing to see and be in the presence of the writer of these stories.  OH BLESSED REST to be with him.  HE is my promised land.

I don't want to cover up the brokenness of my now or run to some cheap imitation promised land that my heart creates.  Yet, I also don't want to focus only on the brokenness, as there is so much of his presence available to me now in the wilderness refresh and delight my soul.

How am I doing at being content with discontent  that this world brings?  What imitation promised lands am I  running to in order to soothe the longing in your heart for more? (THERE ARE SO MANY IN MY LIFE!!)  Do I see how God richly satisfies and sustains me here now in this wilderness?  I'm asking myself these questions today.