The Rare Jewel of Providence: Finding Contentment in the Storm

A few years ago, I preached a sermon on anxiety. At the time, I intended to follow it up with a message on contentment, but the timing never felt quite right. Then life happened. My wife, Amanda, suffered a sudden brain aneurysm followed by a stroke during surgery and later a seizure. Shortly after, a car accident left a family friend’s son badly injured.

In the wake of such heavy events, I questioned whether preaching on contentment was insensitive. I didn’t want to sound like I was telling people to “just suck it up.” Yet, the more I reflected, the more I realized that this is exactly when we need the doctrine of contentment the most. True contentment isn’t a fair-weather virtue; it is a deep-rooted confidence in the character of God when the world feels like it’s falling apart.

Redefining Contentment through Providence

If you look up “contentment” in a modern dictionary, you’ll find a surface-level definition: “feeling or showing satisfaction with one’s possessions or situation.”¹ But that doesn’t answer the why. Why should someone be satisfied with a brain injury or a fractured pelvis?

The original 1828 Webster’s Dictionary offers a more profound insight. It defines contentment as “a resting or satisfaction of mind without disquiet; acquiescence.”² When you dig into his definition of “acquiescence,” Webster connects it to “the allotments of providence.”³ This leads us to a vital truth: you cannot have biblical contentment without a firm grasp of God’s providence.

The Heidelberg Catechism (Question 27) explains providence as the almighty, everywhere-present power of God. It teaches that “herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, and all things come, not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.”⁴ Contentment, therefore, is the quiet submission of the heart to the sovereign, wise, and fatherly disposal of God.

The Scope of God’s Care

We often struggle with contentment because we think some things are too small for God to notice or too tragic for Him to have intended. Yet Scripture is clear that nothing is left to chance. Proverbs 16:33 tells us, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” Even what appears random to human perception is governed by the Lord’s decree. Casting lots was the ancient equivalent of rolling dice, yet Scripture insists the outcome is determined by God.

Jesus reinforces this in Matthew 10:29–31, stating that not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father, and even the hairs of our head are numbered. He points to birds being fed and lilies being clothed (Matthew 6:26, 28–30), neither of which exercise foresight or effort. The argument is not merely that God notices them, but that He actively provides for them. If God governs such transient things, His care for His people is never accidental.

As Psalm 104:27–29 notes, creation waits upon God for provision: “These all look to you, to give them their food in due season.” Food arrives neither early nor late but at the intentional timing of God. Whether it is a strand of hair or a life-altering medical diagnosis, nothing escapes His rule. In Jonah 4:6–7, we see God “appoint” a plant for comfort and then “appoint” a worm to destroy it. If God is intimately involved in the life of a worm or a sparrow, how much more is He involved in the details of your life? Our anxiety cannot add a single hour to our span of life (Matthew 6:27) because our days were written in His book before they ever began (Psalm 139:16). Recognizing this doesn’t make the pain disappear, but it removes the fear that our suffering is random or meaningless.

Sovereignty Over Every Circumstance

We must also confront the temptation to view prosperity or hardship as arbitrary. Hannah’s confession in 1 Samuel 2:6–7 reminds us: “The LORD kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The LORD makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts.” Wealth and poverty, exaltation and humiliation, all fall within God’s sovereign hand. This is why Job, after losing everything, could say, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). Job did not attribute his losses to chance or misfortune; he traced both the giving and the taking directly to the Lord.

Scripture does not shy away from affirming that even calamity falls under God’s command. Lamentations 3:37–38 asks, “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?” Similarly, Amos 3:6 asks, “Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?” This confronts the impulse to shield God from difficult realities. As Isaiah 45:7 declares, “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things.” Nothing lies beyond His creative and governing will.

Trusting the Character of the Governor

It is one thing to know God is in control; it is another to believe He is good. If we view God as a distant or malicious tyrant, His sovereignty will make us bitter, not content. This is why we must remember that providence is not just a “force”—it is the hand of God Himself.

When the Israelites grumbled in the wilderness (Exodus 16), they thought they were complaining about their circumstances. Moses corrected them: “Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.” Discontentment is often a veiled accusation against God’s character. It is a way of saying, “God, You aren’t being wise, or You aren’t being good.”

But the Bible insists that God’s ways are “most wise, holy, and powerful” (Westminster Confession). We see this perfectly in the life of Joseph. He was sold into slavery, falsely accused of a crime, and forgotten in a dungeon. From a human perspective, it was a series of disasters. Yet Joseph could later say to those who wronged him, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

Resting in What We Do Not Know

Romans 8:28 promises that for those who love God, all things work together for good. This “good” isn’t always our immediate comfort or the restoration of our health; it is our conformity to the image of Christ. We are “more than conquerors” (v. 37) not because we avoid the “pit,” but because nothing in that pit—not famine, nor sword, nor brain surgery—can separate us from the love of God.

Much of our discontentment stems from our ignorance. We don’t know the future, and we don’t know the “why” behind our current trials. Paul concludes his great discourse on God’s sovereignty in Romans 11:33 by exclaiming, “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

We don’t need to know the mind of the Lord to trust the heart of the Lord. Contentment is found when we stop trying to be the counselors of God and start resting in the fact that from Him, through Him, and to Him are all things. If you are in a season of “disquiet,” look past the circumstances to the Fatherly hand that has ordained them. He is too wise to be mistaken and too good to be unkind.

1. Merriam Webster, s.v. “contented,” accessed December 29, 2025, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/contented

2. Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. “contentment,” accessed December 29, 2025, Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/contentment

3. Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. “acquiescence.”

4. Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 27, in Historic Creeds and Confessions, electronic ed. (Oak Harbor, WA: Lexham Press, 1997).