God's gift of contentment

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.

The meal that God, divine Love, prepares for you, is not just three times a day. God gives you His daily bread moment by moment.

His bread is the daily inspiration He gives you, the daily ideas He sends you, the loving intuitions that feed your deepest need. It is this continuous communion with Him, as shown in the Lord's Prayer, that awakens you to realize that you actually already have all that you need:

You have an adorably loving Father-Mother
You have a safe place to live (His kingdom)
You have sure training and guidance (His will)
You have all your needs met (His daily bread)
All your mistakes corrected (His forgiveness)
Deliverance from all evil (His leading and deliverance)
And so you have confidence to go forward (under His supremecy)

Keeping your eyes on Him - and off your human circumstances - takes practice. But it opens you up to actually experience the blessings He has already prepared for you. And as you awake to those blessings, and act on them, you find you can be content right now, right here.

This may be the greatest awakening there is: contentment - accepting what Love is giving you right now, actually receiving what Love is already providing and acting on it. You could say that the grace of contentment is the "peace, and joy, and power" of God being made manifest in your thoughts, your actions, your life.

As John Greenleaf Whittier's beautiful hymn says:

"Dear Lord and Father of us all, forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind; in purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

"In simple trust like theirs who heard, beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord, let us like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.

"Breathe through the pulses of desire Thy coolness and They balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still small voice of calm.

"Drop Thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease;
Take from us now the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace."