If you look at where you are right now, there was a time in your life when you dreamed of this…

But once you arrive, it’s not quite enough anymore, is it? You want more. What was once just the horizon, now has a horizon beyond it, and there is something inside the human heart that just can’t resist a horizon.

But what happens when, all of your dreams fulfilled, you just can’t feel content? That seems to be the modern plague–ever wanting more, and never having enough. Ad campaigns take advantage of that, showing us more sparkling things that we never knew we wanted. We get caught up in it, and we think, “If I could just achieve this next thing, this next step, this next accomplishment, then I’ll be satisfied.”

I think that the Amish capture our imaginations so well because they are a group of people who have found the secret to stepping outside of that rushing cycle of getting more and more and more, and they have found contentment. We go and buy items from their shops, watch them as they go about their daily lives, read stories about their culture and their way of seeing things, and we wonder how we can get just a thimbleful of their contentment. Because when I consider buying an Amish-made quilt, that really is what I’m seeking, isn’t it?

As I rush forward toward my ambitions, I can sense that the answer to my own contentedness is in the opposite direction–slowing down, and in looking upward, in listening to the wind and pondering things that are bigger than me. Contentment isn’t found over there, beyond those hills; it’s found right here, right now. It’s found in declaring what I have enough and being grateful for every breath I take.

As for me, have I given up on the horizon? No, I must admit that I haven’t. The horizon is exciting! It gives me ideas, it keeps me dreaming. But I’m trying to focus less on the distant horizon, because I never seem to reach it, and exciting as it is, it can get frustrating. Instead, I’m shifting my gaze upward to the clouds and the stars and the One who made them.

I think that is where that thimbleful of contentment lies.

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Hitting the shelves in September! 

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