When speaking of the world and its pleasures, it all seems so … inadequate. I formerly saw the things of this world as things which I desired, things that brought purpose to life. Today, it all seems so … shallow, filled with vanity and excess. But when Christ brings His peace, not as the world calls peace, but true peace rooted in our Saviour, then contentment quickly follows. And with that, you begin to see that we are truly NOT of this world any longer. We are merely IN the world.

There is something almost difficult to articulate about what happens when Christ becomes the center of your life. It’s not necessarily that every worldly thing suddenly becomes evil. Rather, its ability to satisfy you is exposed as radically insufficient.

Things that once seemed enormous become small. Things that once seemed urgent become strangely unimportant. Things you once thought would give you identity, significance, pleasure, security, or purpose reveal themselves to be unable to bear the weight you had placed upon them.

And that’s where the distinction between peace and contentment is so important.

Christ doesn’t merely give you circumstances that are peaceful. He gives you peace in spite of circumstances.

John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”

The world says peace is the absence of trouble. Christ says, in effect, peace is having Him in the midst of trouble.

And once you’ve experienced that, worldly substitutes start looking remarkably cheap.

You can chase possessions, recognition, pleasure, entertainment, status, wealth, influence, approval—all of the things that promise “This will finally make you content.” And then Christ gives you something that doesn’t depend upon possessing any of them.

That’s when you discover something almost offensive to the world’s way of thinking:

Contentment doesn’t require abundance.

Paul could say:

Philippians 4:11 “For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”

That’s an extraordinary statement. Not “I’ve obtained everything I wanted.” Not “My circumstances finally became ideal.”

“I have learned… to be content.”

Because the source of contentment isn’t the world around Paul. It’s Christ within him. And that brings us directly to what I said about being in the world but not of the world.

Jesus prayed precisely that:

John 17:15 “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”

That’s such an important distinction. Christ doesn’t necessarily remove us from the cave. He changes what the cave means to us. We’re still here. We still work. We eat, laugh, love, build things, experience beauty, enjoy our families, walk through nature, appreciate music, and participate in ordinary human life.

But those things cease to be gods.

We can enjoy creation without worshipping it. We can possess things without being possessed by them. We can experience pleasure without making pleasure our purpose. We can love another human being profoundly without asking that person to fill the place that belongs only to Christ.

And perhaps most importantly, we can lose things without losing ourselves, because our identity isn’t ultimately located in anything that can be taken from us.

That’s why my description of the world as “shallow, filled with vanity and excess” reminds me so strongly of Ecclesiastes.

Solomon spends much of that book looking at precisely the things human beings spend their lives pursuing—wealth, pleasure, achievement, wisdom, labor, reputation—and repeatedly arrives at the word “vanity.”

Not necessarily because all those things have zero value. But because none of them can carry the weight of ultimate meaning.

And then, at the end:

Ecclesiastes 12:13 “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”

He found that the entire purpose of life is to fear God, and keep His Commandments. As today is the Sabbath day, this verse is especially relevant.

It’s almost as though Solomon spent the entire book walking through the cave and examining the shadows one by one, only to finally turn around and say: “These aren’t what I thought they were.”

And Christ gives us something infinitely better than the shadows. Not merely another thing to desire.

Himself.

And once you’ve found Him, this becomes one of the strangest truths of the Christian life: You can still appreciate the world enormously—and simultaneously realize that the world could never have been enough for you.

You aren’t necessarily longing to escape creation.

You’re longing for the Creator.

And that’s a very different hunger.

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