Holy discontent Batman!

I'm feeling contented today. There is a white world of blowing snow outside (yes, November in Abbotsford BC is usually a little warmer and wetter this time of year) but I am burrowed inside my apartment with slippers and jogging pants. Aahhh. Life is good.

Contentment is cool because its more a state of mind than circumstances. I could be upset that my car didn't make it up my driveway yesterday and now I have to walk down to get to it today in the cold. I could be inconvenienced that I really can't drive anywhere because of the roads. But contentment chooses to be at rest despite circumstances. It's been said that "godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6)

This weekend I heard about the concept of "holy discontent". The idea behind it is that there are things that you have been wired to be annoyed by, but in a good way. This idea says that through your experience, there are injustices or needs that stand out especially to you, and bring you to the point of saying, "That's it! I've had enough - I can't handle that anymore - I need to do something!" And these things aren't just felt by you, they are felt by God too. It's the place where your heart and God's heart are "wrecked" for the same issue, people-group, injustice, need, brokenness, etc.

I think my "holy discontent" areas are 1.)unaccepted people who are socially outcast, 2.)young people who don't find Jesus as an anchor for their soul, and 3.)poorly led corporate worship that doesn't allow people to connect spirit-to-Spirit with God.

What's your holy discontent?

Dirty Floors

I live in an apartment building. It has linoleum floors in the kitchen and when I moved here almost 2 years ago, I found that there were some irremovable stains on them. Not that I tried to remove them of course, but they had that irremovable look to them. The kind that seem to be a part of the flooring, like they were made like that. A sort of "used" look.

Anyways, because of the already "used" look of my floor, as well as my bacheloresque skills, my kitchen floor has tended to collect more, well, "used" features. I'm not sure what got into me today, maybe I just had time on my hands, but I got down to some serious cleaning. I was sitting at the kitchen table and noticed the stain under the corner of my fridge. There was a distinct line where my "swiffer" couldn't reach any further and a stain was growing. "That's gross" I finally decided. And got on my hands and knees with some cleaner and paper towel and went to town on that sucker. And from there I had to keep going. Like a man possessed I followed the crack where my floor meets the cupboards and now I can proudly say my floors are clean. Minus the irremovable ones.

I just got thinking of how things can go a while and we get used to the stains we always see. Maybe its because we don't the time to actually stop and look underneath, behind, in the corners and cracks. But it gets really gross. I think that's like our hearts too. When I don't stop and really look, I collect stains and junk. I can get used to how it looks and forget about the great experience of a short account with Jesus. So here's to confession. Here's to repentance. Here's to letting God's Spirit speak into the cracks and corners of our inner selves. And here's to actually doing something about what we hear. Oh yeah, and there's no such thing as an irremovable stain with Jesus.