Recalibrating The Eggdicator: The Demise of Veruca Salt

I'm distracted.

Yes. Again.

How about a little stream-of-consciousness-bullet-point-prose as a sampling of said distracted-ful-ness-er-ilation?
-I want chickens. Live ones. With their own coop and run in the back yard. Laying eggs aplenty for our FabFive. ("atleast a hundred a day...and by the way...")
-I want mulch.
-I want to build, prepare, and plant raised garden beds.
-I want to buy lots of flowers and shrubs and trees and put them in the ground.
-I want ten pounds of worms for vermiculture.
-I want the garage cleaned out.
-I want the garage closed in.
-I want hardwood laminate throughout the house.
-I want a minivan.
-I want the idiot on the Kawasaki motorcycle to stop speeding up and down my road everyday.
-I want everyone to stop piling stuff on the piano when they walk in the door.
-I want Brilliant Beauty to take more responsibility with helping around Quaint Cottage.
-I want Little Big Man to put his bodily refuse in the toilet.
-I want to be about four clothing sizes smaller.
-I want to blog with amazing consistency, full of amazing content that's amazingly insightful.
-I want to wait and see and be patient and faithful and rightly focused and trust God for the "if" or timing of all of this stuff.
-I want to make it all happen myself, put it all on credit, and let it eat.

"I want it NOW!!!"

Sheesh, and Good Grief.

Some of this stuff is just wants. Some of it may qualify as a need (until you look around in comparison at the millions of others that do with less than we've already got). I don't feel condemned or guilty for wanting any of it, but I do feel frustrated; about not having it, about spending too much time thinking about it, about maybe never getting it.

Here's a definition: Contentment - the state of desiring no more than one already has; satisfied.

Sigh.

Big sigh.

Hmm. Really, I want to be content.

You can't buy that on credit.

Shakespeare said, "Poor and content is rich and rich enough". And Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Poor.
Content.
Poor plus content.
Poor (in spirit) equals heiress to a kingdom.

So I don't have everything on my list, but does that qualify me as "poor in spirit"? Here's how one theologian describes "poor in spirit": "In our more honest moments, we recognize our profound neediness, our intellectual limitations, our spiritual inadequacy, our moral failures. In our helplessness, we turn to God. Our response of gratitude and trust, itself a grace, means that the kingdom of heaven is ours". Another adds, "Blessed are those who are convinced of their basic dependency on God, whose lives are emptied of all that doesn't matter, those for whom the riches of this world just aren't that important. The kingdom of God is theirs."

How's that for a winnowing project?

Paul, having the change in his pocket to speak of such things since he lived a life that ranged from highest rank and robe to that of a prisoner serving a protracted sentence, wrote, "I am not complaining about having too little. I have learned to be satisfied with whatever I have. I know what it is to be poor or to have plenty, and I have lived under all kinds of conditions. I know what it means to be full or to be hungry, to have too much or too little. Christ gives me the strength to face anything."

Nope. Can't buy that on credit. And sometimes, it's hard-won.

But, oh, satisfaction.

A Lucky Poor (E. Peterson)
A beech tree in winter, white
intricacies unconcealed
against sky blue and billowed
clouds, carries in his emptiness
ripeness: sap ready to rise
on signal, buds alert to burst
to leaf. And then after a season
of summer a lean ring to remember
the lush fulfilled promises.
Empty again in wise poverty
that let's the reaching branches stretch
a millimetre more towards heaven,
the bole expand ever so slightly
and push roots into the firm
foundation, lucky to be leafless:
deciduous reminder to let it go.

"Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare."

Look at what I already have. Enough is as good as a feast.