Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Sheridan Voizzi, and I've titled today's devotional, Catching Contentment.

In a psychiatrist's advice column, he responded to a reader named Brenda, who lamented that her ambitious pursuits had left

her discontented. His words were blunt. Humans aren't designed to be happy, he said, only to survive

and reproduce. We're cursed to chase the teasing and elusive butterfly of contentment, he added,

not always to capture it.

I wonder how Brenda felt reading the psychiatrist's nihilistic words, and how different she may

have felt had she read Psalm 131 instead. In its words, David gives us a guided reflection

on how to find contentment.

He begins in a posture of humility, putting his kingly ambitions aside, and while wrestling life's big questions is important, he puts those aside too.

Then he quiets his heart before God, entrusting the future into his hands.

The result is beautiful. Like a weaned child with its

mother, he says, I am content. In a broken world like ours, contentment will at times feel

elusive. In Philippians 4, 11 to 13, the Apostle Paul said contentment is something to be learned.

But if we believe we're only designed to survive and reproduce,

contentment will surely be an uncatchable butterfly.

David shows us another way.

Catching contentment through quietly resting in God's presence.

Today's scripture reading is from Psalm 131.

My heart is not proud, Lord. My eyes are not haughty. I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.

But I have calmed and quieted myself.

I am like a weaned child with its mother.

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