Daily Verse
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Contentment
🎧 Listen to Today's Devotional
Wednesday's Reflection
1 Timothy 6:8 — And having food and raiment let us be therewith content.
Thomas à Kempis was a German monk who lived in the fifteenth century and wrote "The Imitation of Christ" — one of the most widely read Christian books after the Bible, translated into more languages than almost any other work in history. He spent most of his life in a monastery in the Netherlands, copying manuscripts and writing. He held no great office. He sought no fame. He said once: "What doth it profit thee to enter into deep discussion concerning the Holy Trinity, if thou lack humility?" And again: "Better of a surety is a lowly peasant who serveth God, than a proud philosopher who watcheth the stars and neglecteth the knowledge of himself."
His whole life and writing were oriented toward one question: what does it mean to actually become like Christ, rather than simply knowing about Him? And the answer he returned to again and again was humility, simplicity, and the willingness to be unknown. He was deeply suspicious of the hunger for knowledge, position, and recognition — not because these things were evil in themselves, but because they so easily became substitutes for the one thing necessary. He wanted less, not more. Not out of asceticism but out of a conviction that the clutter of ambition and acquisition made it harder to hear God and harder to be like Christ.
The contentment Paul describes in 1 Timothy — food and clothing, nothing more — is not a call to poverty. It is a call to simplicity of soul. To hold things lightly. To find sufficiency in God rather than in accumulation. Thomas à Kempis spent his life demonstrating that this was possible, and what he produced in that simple life has outlasted the empires of his day by six centuries.
Prayer: Lord, deliver us from the restlessness that comes from wanting more than we need. Give us Thomas à Kempis' simplicity — the freedom that comes from holding things lightly and finding our sufficiency in You. Amen.