For Devotional Reading from the Daily Common Lectionary:  Luke 10: 1-17

Text; Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you. (vs. 8)

Taking Jesus seriously can be fun, if you make it fun.  It can be a joy, if you make it joyful.

Today’s devotional reading is full of lessons and insights. For example, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” (v. 2) There is a lot of Kingdom work to be done in this world but there are few willing to do the work. That is just a fact. “I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves”. (v.3)  The world is a cruel place. People will try to take advantage of you.  But being a disciple of Jesus does not mean that you are naive. In Matthew’s gospel disciples are told to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves; understand the ways of the world but do not adopt them.

In building my spiritual muscles I have taken to today’s “text”; “eat whatever is set before you” as a guide. As a rule, unless it doesn’t fit my budget, whenever I eat out, I spend little time looking over a men. I simply order the special of the day! As a consequence, besides the broadening of my palate, I am learning to be content in the midst of a world of choices.

C,S, Lewis inspired me. He had powerful insight on Gluttony. Gluttony can be of “Delicacy” as well as of “Excess”. The person who thinks that they are practicing “Temperance” because they only want a little, “done properly”, of course, is a glutton consuming everyone else’s time and energy! (The Screwtape Letters, Letter 17)

My spiritual exercise may not for you, but each of us has something that we can do to develop a spirit of Contentment. It may be exercising even though you do not have a gym membership, or recovering the dying art of handwritten letters or any number of things.  The point is to learn the spiritual practice of “Contentment”. I believe that as we grow in Contentment we will be better equipped to “harvest” and watch out for wolves!

Lord God, that world tells us that we have to have this thing or that thing in order to be fulfilled. All we really need is to learn how to be content in Your Presence. Show us our path to Contentment so that we can be better disciples. Amen.