This is the continuation of an earlier post about a Bible study in which I’m facilitating and participating.

But godliness with contentment is great gain.
For we brought nothing into the world
and we can take nothing out of it.
But if we have food and clothing, 
we will be content with that.
~ 1 Timothy 6:6-8

The Comparison Trap:  Week Three, Day Six… Some of my reminders and my takeaways from the daily devotional include:

A I’ve mentioned before, I have a family member who is incarcerated.

Tonight, I had the chance to speak with him on the phone, and he was solemn. He shared some highlights from his day, and I shared some from mine, but there was something else going on.

I asked him about it, and he said,
“Despite everything in here,
I have a lot to be grateful for.”

He went on to tell me that someone he had shared games of chess and conversations with so many times, someone he’d shared family stories with, someone he’d roomed with on two occasions while in different cell blocks, someone he had just sat with at lunch yesterday had passed away last night.

His friend (friends are hard to come by in prison), had died a few hours after the two of them had shared a meal together. He was 61. He had food and clothing, as all the inmates do, but I wonder about the struggle to find gratefulness or contentment in a place like that when one has no control over much of anything in their daily life.

My takeaway has nothing to do with today’s devotional, but it has everything to do with being grateful for all we are given.

It’s easy to say that my blessings are many since my days aren’t spent in a prison or not knowing who to trust. To compare my life to that would be to fall into the comparison trap.

Yet, I can allow it to remind me that living a life of gratefulness leads to contentment. I don’t have to be thankful or content based on someone else’s shortcomings, issues, or challenges, but on finding the contentment in what I do have… in my family, friends, my gifts, my time, my talents and the treasures I hold dear, because they are connected to people or places which have impacted my life.

“The shortcut to contentment is gratitude.” 
Be grateful today.