Contentment
Among the fascinating stories in the Bible is an account of an influential woman who lived with her husband in ancient Israel in a village called Shunem. This woman once invited the prophet Elisha to her home for a meal. He seemed to appreciate her hospitality. Later on she and her husband erected a small room on the roof of their house and furnished it with a bed, table, chair, and lamp. She invited Elisha to use this "prophet's chamber" whenever he happened to pass through town with his servant Gehazi.
During one visit Elisha summoned the woman to his room and had Gehazi say to her, "You have gone to all this trouble for us. Now what can be done for you? Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?"
She replied, "I dwell among my own people."1
As William Penn once remarked, "It was a great answer of the Shunammite woman."2
Contentment! She wanted nothing in return
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for her gesture of kindness. She was making a gracious gesture from the overflow of a satisfied heart. What a model for us who are ageing! One of the latter-day blessings that God can send to us is to wash away the rancid taste of self-promotion. How sweet it is when the ego no longer keeps clamoring for a place in the sun by trying to be the sun. We can then ignore the jungle and the rat-race, and say with the Shunammite woman, "I have a home among my own people."
When I was editing Decision, I would emerge from my editor's cubicle periodically and announce to my staff: "Now hear this, everybody. I am humble, meek, retiring, modest, unpretentious, self-effacing, and I shun the limelight!" It was always good for a laugh because everyone knew me. Well, here is the real joke: Now that I've retired, it's starting to be true. Age has done it. All you ambitious young people take note: A day is coming when you will cease to care about basking in your own importance. The words of poet Thomas Gray will find their way to you: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."3
When we have learned to be satisfied with what we have and are settled down to the enjoyment of it, growing old can be a serene experience. Contentment becomes a glorious feeling, really it does. We take pleasure in the butterflies and hummingbirds with a new delight. As a more cheerful poet, James Russell Lowell, put it, "Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, and over it softly her warm ear lays."4
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The necessities of life are still with us, but are reduced to a proper proportion. With our minds at ease and our thoughts fixed on "things of good report," with our bodies under control and our spirits freshened by the Spirit of God, we are well equipped to enjoy the rest of the good life.
There are, however, issues that may crop up and interfere with that enjoyment. Suppose an invitation goes out and we learn we were not included. Do we feel left out? Not any more. When we were younger that might have bothered us, but now we decide there undoubtedly were reasons for the omission — our age, perhaps. In any case we have our God, who knows all about it; we have the friends God has given us, and the claims of our own interests. Why the to-do? It's not important; forget it.
Or suppose an honorary appointment or an award has been announced and someone far less qualified is given preference. Do we eat our hearts out because we were passed over? Do we gnash our teeth and say we should have had the honor? The Devil would like that. So why not give it to the Devil, seeing it is his kind of dish? At this time in our lives how foolish it all seems! God is our inheritance and our reward.When we were younger, we had our innings. We strove; we marched; at least some of us secretly coveted and yearned for recognition; we wrote our resumes and profiles and did our best to tout our achievements. Now we've quit. Is it sour grapes? Call it that if you wish. But much
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better, call it "growing old gracefully." I say it's time for somebody else to take center stage and welcome to it. It's time for us to step aside, join in the applause, and be content.
Suppose, however, our problem is that our old age is blighted by a deep sense of neglect. This feeling is an impediment to contentment at any time of life, and particularly in retirement. It happens to older people when the children they have reared, the friends of a lifetime, the people they have gone out of their way to help all fail to remember them. Something is needed at the drug store, and nobody is available to pick it up. The mailbox remains empty. The telephone is silent. Birthdays and special days pass unnoticed, and the neglected ones are left feeling miserable. Staff workers in nursing homes are well aware that such scenarios are not unusual among the ageing.
Years ago while a student at the University of California, I was required to read a novel in French, and I've never forgotten it. It was titled La Course du Flambeau, or "The Passing of the Torch." The storyline involved a woman who had lavished all her love on her daughter, and now that the daughter was grown, married, and the mother of her own children, the older woman was bereft. The busy daughter seemed to have no time for her, and the woman's doleful complaint went on for several chapters. But the author concluded that the woman's tragic suffering over her neglect was inevitable. The torch of loving, tender care had been passed to the next generation,
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and in time would be passed to still another. C'est la vie.
What a wasted life! Of course the torch passes; that is indeed la vie. But why get pumped up over neglect? Where is the vision? Where is the calling? Older people need to build their lives around their own interests and not be forlornly dependent on the next or any other generation. Emergencies are emergencies, of course, and society expects filial responsibilities to be fulfilled; but a craven feeling of dependency on the part of older people is to be circumvented wherever possible. One generation should not have to be in thrall to another, nor should one be expected to be everlastingly fetching and carrying for the other. The worst part of the French story was the bitterness that built up in the mother's heart over her daughter's neglect. Bitterness soon settles into anger, and anger digs its own pit. Wallowing in the pit, the mother had neither inclination nor energy to develop a viable lifestyle of her own. Only the Holy Spirit can empty out the rancor and then pour out the love of God into the neglected and wounded heart. If you feel bitterness creeping into your heart, ask the Holy Spirit to take it from you.
Back in 1951 while a student at Edinburgh University, I heard one of Scotland's finest preachers, Arthur John Gossip. At that time he was an old man with white hair and a quavery voice. I watched him climb slowly into the Barclay church pulpit and preach. I remember the scene, but I cannot remember a word of his sermon.
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I remember only the prayer he offered. "O Lord," he said, "just help us old ones to keep out of other people's way."
What insight! One of the keys to contentment in old age is to avoid being cumbersome. We should never seek to be the center of attention unless God tells us to or it can't be helped. Rather, we should enjoy being inconspicuous. But we should not try to major in it, lest by our inconspicuousness we become conspicuous. We should just be glad that someone else is carrying on. We should adopt the old wag's philosophy. When asked his opinion he said, "I agree with the gentleman on the other side of the room."
In his novel The Possessed, Feodor Dostoevsky has a delightful dialogue between an elderly man, Stepan, and a younger woman, Varvara, in which the lady advises the gentleman how he should conduct himself at a literary fete where he has been invited to give a reading. Stepan has told Varvara he plans to read something about Raphael's "Sistine Madonna." She wants to know why he insists on being so absurd and tedious. "On the contrary," she urges him, "come on to the platform with a dignified smile as the representative of the last generation, and tell them two or three anecdotes in your witty way. Though you may be an old man now, though you may belong to a past age, though you may have dropped behind them in fact, yet you'll recognize it yourself with a smile in your preface, and all will see that you're an amiable, good-natured, witty relic — in brief, a man of the old savor."5
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It's true about us as well. We are of the old savor, the representatives of a past age, a different world. Along this line, someone recently sent us in the mail a "Profile of a Senior." Although I don't know the source of this amusing reminiscence, I am in complete agreement with it and take the liberty of quoting from it in part:
A senior is one who was here before the pill, before television, penicillin, polio shots, antibiotics, and frisbees, before frozen food, nylon, Xerox, the Kinsey report, radar, fluorescent lights, credit cards, and ball point pens. For us time sharing meant togetherness and had nothing to do with condos. A "chip" meant a piece of wood. "Software" wasn't even a word. Marlene Dietrich had yet to slip on her first pair of trousers. We were before pantyhose and drip dry clothes, before ice makers and dishwashers, before clothes dryers, freezers, and electric blankets. We were before Leonard Bernstein, Ann Landers, yogurt, plastic, the forty-hour week, and the minimum wage. We got married first and then lived together. Closets were for clothes, not for coming out of. Bunnies were small rabbits and coke was a soft drink. Gay meant light-hearted. Grass was for mowing. Pot was something you cooked in.
We were before Grandma Moses and Frank Sinatra. Girls thought cleavage was something the butcher did with his cleaver. QE 1, Jeeps, the Jefferson Memorial, pizza, instant and decaffeinated coffee, and McDonalds were all unheard of. We were before Batman and Snoopy, before DDT, vitamin pills, Boy George, and J.D. Salinger,
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before FM radios, tape recorders, electric typewriters, word processors, and Muzak.
Think of the adjustments we seniors have had to make!
One of the most important adjustments is to preserve one's independence amid all the changes in order not to become an appendage. Contentment depends a great deal on how we relate to other people, whether we can avoid requiring people to wait on us, and if it is impossible, then to accept their help graciously. If we can do that, we will have accomplished far more than if, at an advanced age, we totter boldly up some silly mountain and then fall into a ravine.
One's own sense of calling from God can be an enormous source of contentment. If a senior citizen is operating his or her own agenda, that citizen is far less likely to be disturbed by delays and interruptions, whether the agenda be building a boat or knitting a sock. Because God's calling is for keeps, and one can always go back to it, we can afford to take time to visit with children and grandchildren and neighbors. We can afford to simplify our lives, to avoid going to so many meetings, to take walks instead, to enjoy coffee with our kinfolk or neighbors. If, when driving, we miss the turn, we can think that perhaps God saw trouble up ahead and arranged for us to miss it. And if we are working on a house and it rains before we get the roof on, well, so be it. The rain was needed, and God knew what He was doing.
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We need to refresh ourselves not only with some of the beautiful stories of the Old Testament, such as the dialogue between Elisha and the Shunammite woman, but also with the Gospel accounts themselves. In my recent book Jesus, Man of Joy,6 I have sought to penetrate behind the hallowed traditional translations to learn what Jesus was really like. An aura of good-natured if not lighthearted calm seemed to surround His movements, as if He had plenty of time, even though His time was limited. Contrast this with the excessive pressure of some of our Christian gatherings.
Beyond the calm there was in Jesus this light touch that soon becomes evident when we start looking for it. It was in fact His amiable demeanor, His air of warmhearted composure, that told me more about our Lord's inner contentment than the ponderous religious severity and artificial solemnity with which the church has often tried to clothe Him.
In the same way the apostle Paul had a wonderful way with people that bespoke his inner ease of mind. He wrote to the church at Philippi, "I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound . . . to be full and to be hungry."7
Content, while he clung for hours to a piece of wood in the Mediterranean sea? Content, while he yearned for the salvation of his kinsmen? Content with much or little, in freedom or in chains? Yes. Paul was content.
No wonder this amazing Jew from Tarsus appealed
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to Greeks and Romans and Asians and Jews and Arabs alike. More often than is realized, people become Christians after they have encountered a contented Christian; they want to be like him or her. That explains why the Galilean fishermen left their nets when they heard Jesus say, "Follow me."
We who are older can have a ministry far more effective than we had in our younger days if we are wearing the badge of contentment. It tells the world that we have learned to trust a Friend who is working behind the scenes to take care of things. We can relax; everything is not on us. Contentment, without question, is one of God's supreme gifts.
Chapter 11 || Table of Contents
1. See 2 Kings 4:8-13.
2. Penn's comment on "A Private Life" in Some Fruits of Solitude in Maxims and Reflections (London: 1693 and 1702); republished in Spiritual Awakening, S.E. Wirt, ed. (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1986), 198.
3. Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."
4. James Russell Lowell, "The Vision of Sir Launfal," Part One, Prelude.
5. Feodor Dostoevsky, The Possessed, trans. Constance Garnett (London: J.M. Dent, 1960), vol. 1, 315.
6. S.E. Wirt, Jesus, Man of Joy (San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, 1991).
7. See Philippians 4:12.
