Picture this.  A goat tied to a tree on a lonely Oklahoma farm with a tornado bearing down.  That’s the story an old man once told me of a boyhood experience of his.  A storm had blown up out of nowhere, as it often does on the plains, long before the days of television; there was no such thing as an early warning system.  By the time they realized it, the family barely had time to take cover.  The last thing the old man said he remembered seeing before the tornado hit was that goat, tied to a tree next to the house, chewing some grass.  After scoring a direct hit on the farmhouse, the tornado went as fast as it had come.  As the family dug itself out the first thing they saw was that goat, still tied to the tree and still chewing its cud as though nothing had ever happened. 

To my knowledge no research has been done on the psychological trauma afflicted by tornados on tree-tied goats.  For all I know that goat meowed the rest of its life instead of bleating.  But, in that old man’s mind, that post-tornado goat chewing its cud had remained the perfect picture of contentment the rest of his life.  Here that goat was, helplessly tied down while a tornado blows in for a direct hit.

He couldn’t change what was about to happen to him and he couldn’t run away.  So, he did the only thing he could do, enjoy what, for all he knew, was his last meal. 

Some days, wouldn’t it be nice to be as dumb as that goat, just able to savor the moment we’re in, with no fear of tomorrow or even of the next minute?  But, we aren’t.  We’re more aware and able to appreciate the destructive power of tornados and roller coaster stock markets and terrorists armed with bio-weapons and snipers with high-powered rifles in shopping centers.  It is also true that it usually takes a lot less than a tornado to get our goat because most of us live dependent on some expectation of favor from our circumstances or from other people for our sense of contentment and well being. And, it is also true that, as far as effecting the kinds of change in the world and people around us that we believe would finally make us happy, we’re as helpless as a goat tied to a tree.  It gets old feeling both so dependent and so helpless, wouldn’t you agree?

So, how can we redirect this higher sense of awareness so that we, too, could honestly say, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have . . . In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me”?  Someone has said that contentment is the one spiritual gift that has to be learned (Thanks to James Flamming).  Contentment, a sense that we are complete.  That we don’t need anything else added to what we already have to be at peace.  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and so on are spoken of as gifts the Spirit just bestows upon us as his favor for being in relationship with him.  But, contentment, Paul said, had to learned.

How does that kind of spiritual learning take place?  Isn’t it when our expectations meet reality and one of the two has to adjust?  Sometimes we expect too much and reality teaches us a lesson. 

A young woman in our church tells of a friend of hers who went off to play football at a small western Oklahoma college.  Once he was gone and settled in she wrote and asked him how he liked it there.  He wrote back that the school had only three rules.  One, if you open it, close it.  Two, if you break it, fix it.  And, three, if the girls don’t meet your standards, lower your expectations.  Sometimes, when our expectations meet reality, they have to be lowered.  If a student opens a test paper only to discover questions she’d never heard discussed in class, she can lower her expectation from an “A” to an “F” and, that way, at least no matter what happens, she won’t be disappointed.  Lowering your expectations to fit ever-diminishing possibilities so as to never be disappointed is one option.  It’s a depressing option.  But, it is an option.  It’s just not the one that teaches contentment.

Twice in this text the apostle Paul promises peace.  Once he speaks of experiencing contentment and once he speaks of having a limitless supply of spiritual resource, “I can do all things through (Christ) who strengthens me.”  All of this he promises and witnesses on the other side of redirecting his expectations away from others and toward God and himself.  What are those expectations?

We can expect God’s presence in every moment.  “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  The Lord is near.”  Some believe Paul was referring to the soon return of Jesus to earth.  That time is near, he might be saying, when we’ll see Jesus.  Others believe that he was saying that, no matter where we find ourselves, God is always close.  Either way, it works for me.  In any circumstance of life, the Lord is near.  We’re never out of his reach.  Nothing can ever get closer to us than the presence of God.

The seasons are changing.  Totally out of our control, the earth is tilting ever so slightly on its axis toward the December solstice, when the sun is as far away from the northern hemisphere as it gets all year.  It will be cold.  Then, in late December, the earth will begin tilting our hemisphere back toward the sun.  The earth will warm, spring will come and then summer and fall again.  Life has its seasons, too.  Spring, summer, winter and fall.  Times when life is good and times when life is hard come and go more often than not out of our control.  Friendships have their seasons, marriages too and even churches.

Times when those we love and need seem close and times when they seem inexplicably far away.  “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).”  We can expect the earth to move away from the sun and grow cold.  Close friends draw away now and then, too.  We can even expect times when family and spouses need their space and move away for a while.  If our sense of well-being has too much to do with how close we feel at any given moment to those we love and need most, we’re going to find ourselves yo-yoing back and forth between ups and downs, at the mercy of our highs and lows in joy and sadness. 

But, there is never a time when God is not near.  In time or space, “the Lord is near.”  Learning contentment means learning to redirect our expectation toward the presence of God who will never abandon us, the God who is always closer than our very next breath.

We can expect that God cares about every detail of our lives.  “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”  Tell God everything.  If it’s big enough to worry you, it’s big enough to matter to God.  Tell him everything. 

Do the ghosts of old sins haunt your memory?  Tell it to Jesus.  Are there people you just can’t seem to forgive?  Tell it to Jesus.  Are there temptations that overwhelm you, secret sins you just can’t shake?  Tell it to Jesus.  Tell him everything.

The wife of a late friend of mine told of how her husband had learned to handle the stress that often accompanies parenting teenagers.  One of his stepdaughters was particularly prone to freaking out over the most minute emergencies.  Ed often told her, “I’m not going to let you transfer your crisis into my head.”  The apostle Paul urged, “Guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  That means not letting others transfer their crisis into our heads.  It also means learning what to do with our crises.  Peter once wrote, “Cast all your anxiety on (God) because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7).”  The language actually allows for a translation that would read, “Take whatever burdens you and throw it like a saddle on Jesus’ back.”  You can expect God to care about every detail of your life.  One line from an old gospel hymn refrains, “Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer (Joseph Scriven).”

We can expect to find more good in God’s world than evil.  “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” This is not an instruction to live unaware of or to ignore evil that needs to be redressed or injustice that needs to confronted.  It is an instruction to choose to see the world from a uniquely Christian perspective by always looking for God’s good work despite man’s sin and evil.  In every situation there is something eternally good to be seen, if we will just look for it.

This past Wednesday marked the 15^th anniversary of the rescue of Jessica McClure, the little two-year old girl who was trapped in a well in Midland for 58 hours.  ABC ran the footage of her rescue this past week and again, I found tears coming to my eyes.  Do you remember?  At their own expense, people by the hundreds came from all over the country bringing their equipment and expertise.  People who found themselves drawn together by the common goal of trying to save this one little girl none of them had ever met.  Our own Art Daniel was one of those.  He even climbed down into that hole and sang Jesus Loves Me to Jessica, trying to calm her until they could reach her.  When Jessica was finally safe, they all went home without asking for notoriety, reward or reimbursement.  We saw that same kind of heroism yet again throughout the 9/11 ordeal.  What makes people become instant heroes in a moment of crisis?

Whatever it is, I looked closer at those people again this week.  This is what I saw.  For every terrorist who hijacks a plane and for every coward with a sniper’s rifle picking off innocents in their daily routines there are uncountable thousands who would, at a moment’s notice, come to our rescue, at their own expense, just for the sheer joy of doing something good.  There are more good people than bad in this world.  “Think about these things.”

It’s hard to believe.  The Rolling Stones are back in the top five in nationwide CD sales as of this past week.  Here they are, four decades later, still getting filthy rich even though they still can’t get no satisfaction.  For most people, it works the other way around.  They go broke trying to get just a little satisfaction.  Just a little.  But, what do they expect?  What did you expect?  Don’t we know better? 

We don’t get satisfaction by searching for it.  It comes to us, contentment and peace come to us as gifts, on the other side of learning to trust God, through Christ.  Trusting his close presence every moment, trusting him enough to tell him everything and learning to see that, even when the world is at its worst, God is always doing his best. 

What would you give right now for one minute of that kind of peace?