Over the course of this past month my team and I worked on a farm. It will one day house up to ten families. Ten families without a husband, therefore, these families will all have one commonality: the widow. Working on this pig farm will give them sustainable lifestyle in a Lao culture where most widows are shunned. These widows and their families will be discipled by the farm pastor and his family. This month my team and I caught this vision and used it as motivation for our labor.
During the week we were out living on the farm with bucket showers, manual labor, high temperatures and sleeping in tents. But on the weekends we were at a hostel in the capital city with air conditioning, beds, wi-fi, and restaurants. I feared these two extremes coming into this month. I pictured myself dreading coming back to the farm at the beginning of the week then putting too much joy in the comfort of the hostel at the end. However, it was in the thick of both of these contexts that I began to notice something in me that I did not notice before. These places may have been on contrary sides of the spectrum but I was completely content in both. One weekend while at a coffee shop in the city, I was reading Philippians 4. And as I read,
“Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.”
The Spirit stopped me and said, “You are learning this.” It wasn’t that I was just learning to be content. But much more valuable, I was learning contentment despite circumstances. Interestingly, Philippians 4:13 comes immediately after this. This Christian coffee cup verse is stamped across the evangelical west. It is often found as a tattoo or on the eyeblack of Tim Tebow or on the shoes of a marathon runner. But more than a little nod to Jesus for our successes, it is a verse that gives strength to the parent who lost a child. It is a verse that gives strength to the family without money to buy their next meal. It is a verse that in whatever situation, I can receive strength to be content because He provides it not because I produce it.
Through Him, I can be content in all things. This actually means all things. I can do all things, all those things described in verses 10-11, through Christ who gives me strength.
So what is our response? Our response is not more human effort. It is not to be content. It is not to be strong. Our response is seeing more and more that Christ is our treasure. Christ the Treasure that looks losing my job in the face and says,”Christ is my treasure, not my job.” It is a treasure that endures our hardest trial and enjoys our greatest triumph. It is a treasure that counts all things as loss because we know our Treasure. So we praise God the Provider, in the midst of successes, failures, gains, losses, wants, and needs and say Jesus, “You are Worthy, Worthy of it all.”
“More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.”
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Pictures from this month!
