These words reveal a hard truth: contentment is not natural to us. "Ill weeds grow apace!" Covetousness, discontent, murmuring—these spring up in the human heart as naturally as thorns push through soil. You don't have to teach people to complain. They're experts at it without any education.

But the precious things of earth? Those must be cultivated. If you want wheat, you must plow and sow. If you want flowers, you need a garden and all the gardener's care. Now, contentment is one of the flowers of heaven. If we want it, we must cultivate it. It will never grow wild in us by nature. Only the new nature can produce it, and even then we must be specially careful and watchful to maintain and cultivate the grace God has sown in us.

Paul says, "I have learned to be content." Notice that—learned! He's admitting he didn't always know how. It cost him some pains to master this great mystery. No doubt he thought he'd learned it, then broke down. Failed again. Kept learning.

And when did he finally pen these triumphant words? When he was an old, gray-headed man upon the borders of the grave—a poor prisoner shut up in Nero's dungeon at Rome! We might well be willing to endure Paul's infirmities and share his cold dungeon if we too might attain to his good degree of contentment.

Do not indulge the notion that you can be contented without learning, or learn without discipline. This isn't a power exercised naturally—it's a science to be acquired gradually. We know this from experience.

Brother, hush that murmur, natural though it be, and continue as a diligent pupil in the College of Content.