“If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content” (1Tim.6:8).
TikTok needs no introduction. Recently, an American newspaper set up several TikTok accounts posing as 13-year-olds. They were horrified to find that the video-sharing site channelled the users towards content offering drugs and sex. Ironically, while the Chinese-owned TikTok is corrupting the minds of its foreign users, back home the Chinese government is restricting children’s computer use to an hour a day on weekends.
We have always lived in a discontented world. Unfortunately, in vain attempts to fix the problem, humans have usually opted for a do-it-yourself fix, rather than consulting the Divine Manufacturer. If I had a dollar for every person contented with their lot, I would have a fist full of…well, not much.
Jesus offers solutions to discontentment that most of us are just not willing to carry out. Even though we want to follow Jesus with the sense of being “complete,” the thought of having to “go and sell your possessions and give to the poor (Mt.19:21) to achieve it, is out of the question. We reason that that command must have been for the apostles only; and we move on.
Each of us is going to have to come to grips with the proper use of material possessions in our personal work for Jesus. Suffice it to say that most of us are so weighed down with stuff that we are unable to launch out far in any direction anyway.
Being thankful for what we have NOW is our first step toward contentment. Getting rid of what we don’t need is our second.
However, debt and the ever-increasing expenses of family are serious contenders in this fight to believe that “with food and covering, with these we shall be content” (1Tim.6:8).
We win with one thankful sacrifice after another.
John Staiger
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