Philippians 4: 10-13

I read recently about 72 year-old Kamaruddin Mohammed, who married 51 times. The length of the marriages varied from 2 days to twenty years, but at the time of his last marriage he said: “I am not a playboy. I’ve never believed in marrying more than one woman at a time.”

The sense that there might be something better round the corner haunts many people, who in one way or another are unhappy with where they are. Even those who are moderately content sometimes wonder if, even so, they might be missing out.

During the general election campaign we have heard politicians talking a lot about a need for change. We may well find on Friday that everything has changed - or maybe it will all be exactly the same.

The drive to move ahead in life is important, and is often stimulated by curiosity. In the Bible, God regularly calls people into new ventures in their lives, and new ways of living. But the capacity to be content with whatever situation we are in is also seen as a valuable quality, as we see in the Bible passage shown in the heading to this post.

As we reflect on our Church, and ourselves, it may be that we are so concerned to move on to something new that we fail to see the value of our current situation.

Or maybe the way we are now may make us so content that we no longer look out for new possibilities. It’s always worth checking to see whether we have the balance right, and to be prepared to listen to what God may be calling us to do.