Since the imposition of new lockdown restrictions, I’m sure all of us have been really busy adjusting to what this means. For those in Scotland, this is a lockdown reminiscent of the first one in March, with places of worship also being forced to close.
This ceasing of meeting in the hall affected me more than I thought, and not just because I do not look forward to redoing all the risk assessments and safety measures, but because I saw in the eyes of those who attended how much just seeing across a hall, behind a mask, the familiar faces of folk who have supported them, laughed with them and cried with them over the years.
Going back into a full lockdown has caused so many of us to feel anxious and worried, worried about ourselves or our friends and family who will find this particularly tough.
It may seem a strange time to talk about being acceptance given what is going on around us, but now more than ever it is important that we approach each situation with satisfaction and reflect with peace.
But what does satisfaction mean? What does it feel like?
A friend at university has always said that she wanted to see a panda in the wild. Having had a couple of failed trips Vic decided she would try again. She saved throughout her last two years at university (Vic was a PHD student), worked hard to save the money to travel to China in the summer of 2020, and in December last year, she came in to a support group one day to tell us that it was all sorted and she was going.
Then the pandemic hit.
We spoke briefly over the summer of 2020 and she said these amazing words “I believed that seeing the pandas would fill the gap that has been missing for years, but in the end, the saving and persevering taught me more… life satisfaction is what came instead of the pandas.”
Perhaps you haven’t been searching for pandas in the wild for the past decade, but I would guarantee that you have been searching for something to fill voids that you feel.
Perhaps it hasn’t been as fixed as searching for something that you are missing, but something that you are longing for?
Part of this dissatisfaction problem comes from scrolling down our social media feeds and seeing happy smiling faces of people who seem to have got everything together. We all only put our best side on social media, we share only a limited amount of our lives through our screens. And what happens when we see a picture of a friend who seems to be having a better day or has posted a happy smiling picture… we like it.
But do we really like it or do we resent it? We compare ourselves to this friend, what they are doing and how they are coping, and we see ourselves as coming up short. We are unhappy when we see the success of others; we are envious of our friends and family.
Asaph in Psalm 73 starts off from a very similar position
2-3 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Here the wicked people aren’t particularly bad, they may not believe in God, or if they do, they believe that God is not worth listening to. They may even just have different beliefs about God to us. These people seem to be living in prosperity, they are not affected by job loss, or sick family
The psalmist goes on in verse 5 to say:
5- They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills.
It looks like these people have got it all together, they aren’t suffering without God all is going well for them. Verse 12 says they are “always free of care, they go on amassing wealth”. The Psalmist stops his lament with the words “surely I have kept my heart pure in vain”.
I’m sure we have all thought this, when see others with who are living much more comfortable lives.
Asaph reaches out of his pit of despair, and realises that what’s going on around him, the success of others which seems to bear down on him is not worth his worrying, in verse 20 it says that their successes etc will be “like a dream when one awakes”, barely remembered.
No matter how vivid our dreams are, they are barley rememberable two or three days after we’ve had them. The successes and failures that we see on Facebook and Instagram from our friends, and even ourselves will not be remembered.
When we keep in mind this perspective that the social media happiness is as fleeting as a dream, when we remember that what lasts is not what’s on the internet, but how we feel and how we make other people feel, then we can achieve acceptance of the success of others, we can share in their happiness, we can like a photo and genuinely mean it: Because we have stopped trying to find a quick fix for our satisfaction, to eat a quick snack that doesn’t fill our satisfied hunger, but instead to take time to stop, refocus, and to approach our lives with this mentality of remembering how you make someone else and yourself feel.
We gain satisfaction with our own situation, no matter how high or low, when we stop comparing it to other people or other times.
So yes, whilst my corps aren’t able to meet in person for worship, yes, I now won’t see family or loved ones in person for a period of a few months, these things cannot be changed. They have been imposed and they must be accepted. And through this acceptance comes the satisfied feeling.
(This is part one of two blog posts on satisfaction, next week I’ll be exploring what it means to be satisfied in Christ).