Wasps in Coffee Houses

Sitting and thinking on the side of the Red River. Or I was. Now, I'm enjoying a coffee press at my favorite Starbucks watching a wasp trying to escape my place of escape.

It seems at times that everyone, and everything, is trying to escape something. It seems discontentment and dissatisfaction is the cry of every living thing. Or does it seem this way because I struggle with my own unhappiness and discontentment?

Paul, writer to the Gentiles (that is everyone who isn't a Jew) implores us to learn the art of being content. He states in his writing to the Christians at Philippi that he has "...learned how to be content with whatever I have." To his protege Timothy, he writes: "after all, we brought nothing with us when we came into the world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content."

But is that an impossible view for today? Is contentment possible?

The wasp here in the shop wants out. Why? Sure it isn't in it's natural environment, but there is safety here (relative to the amount of attention it attracts, I concede), there is sustenance here and there is a tremendous amount of space in which to dwell. Speaking in elementary terms, all of its needs are potentially met...but yet it struggles to fly through the window to the outside.

Why?

In watching my fellow sojourner, the wasp, I can draw some parallels to my own struggles with contentment and situation. My own discontentment is based in part, I believe, in the fact that I am made for something more, just as the wasp is made for something more than a coffee house existence. It is made to live outside, to struggle against nature and predator, to eke out a living in the wild and untamed unknown. In a similar way, I am also made for more than this 'coffee house existence'. I am made for eternity, therefore I am discontent in this temporal world.

No, this is not some delusion of grandeur I possess. It is based firmly in my belief, and my blessed hope, that I have been wonderfully created by a loving, paternal Heavenly Father who has gifted me with eternal life through the atoning sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.

I am discontent with anything less than that gift promised me.

So what of it? I am in the here and now. This is my current reality. Am I to be content here? Is temporal contentment a virtue worth cultivating?

I've heard it said of Christians that we are 'too Heavenly minded to be any earthly good'.

So, where is the balance? Is there a realistic balance that can be struck between learning temporal contentment while maintaining a measure of temporal discontentment due to not being where I have been created to exist? Does it even matter?

The dilemma, I perceive, is that I belong to two very different, but equally genuine, realities. Eternity is not my present reality. The temporal is.

I believe that the here and now, with it's shortcomings, challenges and hurt, is still beneficial and worth being content in. The first step, I believe, is a careful evaluation of what this present reality actually is. This is where I need to begin. Stay tuned...for this is all a work in progress.