Christian Contentment in Pain: How to Trust God Daily

Every day begins with a choice. Will I choose a bright outlook or a gloomy one, a contented spirit or a miserable one, a pursuit of God or a pursuit of self-interests?

When I wake up in pain, choosing misery would be the easiest option. I could simply give up and give in to my afflictions and set a miserable course for the day. But before long, I’d be wallowing in the sin of discontent.

Yet I cannot allow myself to go down that dark, grim path. Instead, I start the day with flint-like determination. I instruct my soul and say, “I will trust in the Lord; I will not complain; I will go forth into the day knowing Jesus is with me; and I will believe his grace will meet every need.” I choose the path toward contentment.

Don’t let anyone tell you that contentment is easy. Contentment—real satisfaction with God’s purposes and plans—comes through making tough choices: leaning hard into Jesus, and not away from him, believing God and not your feelings. All this doesn’t come naturally. Even Paul says that he learned the secret of being content.

“For I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content,” (Philippians 4:11).

To learn to be content means practicing good choices over and over again. These choices move us away from self-pity and open the door to a sturdy new way of living in Christ.

This is exactly what I was thinking when I rendered this mixed-media painting of a young sycamore tree surrounded by looming old manzanita bushes. The manzanitas stoop sternly over the sprightly sycamore tree as if they were trying to suffocate the little sapling. Imagining it that way could convey a dark foreboding.

Or, we could change our perspective: the painting could look full of promise, zinging with energy and new possibilities. The young sycamore’s branches reach out, creating space all their own, no matter what the slumped-shouldered old bushes would have them do. The youthful, yellow tree is bursting the boundaries with newness and hope.

Learning to be content in the middle of sorrow, pain, and discomfort is a little like this young sapling. Will our day be gloomy or bright? Do we choose to allow losses to overwhelm us, or do we look at each new day as full of promise and new possibilities? What do we choose?

Though the choices we make often seem small and ordinary, with practice they bear lasting results. Like a sapling sending out one hopeful shoot after another, only time will tell the story of daily choosing the right path.

Now, I don’t mean to say that we can’t ever be sad. As Christians, we can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing. Contentment is simply trusting that God has already given us everything we need for our present happiness, no matter how dire our afflictions.

^“But as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions…as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:4-10).

When I admired the finished painting that I called Young Sycamore Protected by Manzanitas, I smiled. I saw this snappy, little sycamore reaching out and breaking through stuffy old boundaries. In the same way, we can learn a lot from nature’s examples.

Choose the bright path. Choose to trust: to lay hold of grace. Choose contentment and hope. It beats misery any day.

-Joni Eareckson Tada