On Diligence

Thinking today about how diligence goes hand-in-hand with contentment. And the idea that contentment does not mean having everything I need or desire.

Paul, through Christ's enabling, was content, even when his needs weren't met. That's what Philippians 4:13, everyone's favorite verse, is really about.

"I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."

People latch onto these words for the wrong reasons, I think. They want it to mean they'll succeed at their task, accomplish something great, finish something hard, overcome something big, or build something with their own strength.

But I don't think that's where Paul was going with these words.

He was in prison, facing death, uncomfortable, probably hungry, as miserable as a human being could be. Yet he was content--why? Because in that moment he was being diligent at the task he loved. He was laboring as he should. Praying, working, writing, chipping away at a monumental, impossible job.

There was no indication that he would succeed. Quite the opposite. He was suffering, and he was writing to people who were likely to suffer as well. Success, they way the world defines it, was not a condition for him. That's so important for me to get. I have said the words (how I cringe to think of them), "If I only knew he would cause my stories to be published, I would work so hard at this and not worry about my work, my time, my energy, my life, being wasted."

Do you see what I did there? I made publication, or success, as the world defines it for an aspiring writer, my condition.

I have worked halfheartedly, even hidden my work, because if it's not God's will to bring it to fruition, I will be embarrassed for having tried. So I have not been diligent. I have not been content. I have languished over the question of whether or not I should even be doing this.

How awful would it have been for Paul to do the same? Maybe that's not a fair question to ask. Paul's gifting, calling, and labor were not the same as mine. But if I can learn contentedness from him, perhaps I can learn unhesitating diligence too.

Perhaps his life and work can show me that diligence is the seed in which contentedness germinates.

Diligence when no one is looking. When no one seems to care. When no paycheck is forthcoming. When it seems, by the world's standards, to be a fruitless labor.

Only then will I look up from the screen at the end of a long work day, and say with Paul, "I know the secret." Whether men praise me or not, pay me or not, mock me or not, understand me or not.

I am content.

Content to submit. Content to work. Content to wait. Content in his providence. Content with the journey. Content to learn what he has for me right now, knowing that the temptations of "affliction and want" are easier to manage than those of "fullness and prosperity," as Matthew Henry says about this verse.

I can do this only because of Christ, who gives me the strength, not to succeed, but to be content.