How many people can truly say they're content with life?
In his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan), author Rick Warren asks, "Up to this point, what image or metaphor has best described your life? A race, a circus, something else? ... What has been the driving force in your life?"
Many believe the answer is "out there." Contentment, some say, comes from their work, their home, their family, their sport, their causes, other people in their lives, their toys, their bank accounts. Still, people ask the common question, "Is this all there is?"
Humans have an insatiable appetite for more, bigger, better, brighter - and once they get it, it's still not enough.
Those who seem to have everything going for them still want more.
Look at high-profile athletes. Many give all they have to their sport, reach the highest peak they think they can reach, then retire. But soon enough, however, they return.
Consider athletes such as Elvis Stojko, Joanne Malar, Michael Jordan, Dominik Hasek. Each retired, sometimes more than once. About Stojko, Malar, and Jordan, The Globe & Mail reporter Stephen Brunt asks, "Why cling to the past?" and answers that perhaps there's something seductive about the routine, the rhythm of training, concentration on body and mind, striving for goals, the spotlight, the pressure, and the whole world watching.
Joanne Malar, the Canadian swimmer who owns 71 international medals and the Canadian record in the 400-metre individual medley says, "It's something I have to prove to myself personally." And she's going into debt to do it. Yet, after the 2000 Sydney Games she told reporters, "I just couldn't wait to have a life outside of sport."
Retired rower Marnie McBean says she won't come back. Talking to waymoresports.com about athletes returning from retirement, she says, "It can show how hard it is for athletes to move on and get a real life. I thought this watching Michael Jordan come back to sport."
Malar says she's not returning for external reasons. According to waymoresports.com, she says she's, "got it all - a job she loves, a great husband in Toronto Argonaut Mike Moreale, a wonderful home (not to mention she has a fitness program on local television) - but at 27 she believes there is more left in the tank."
Then there's the Dominator, arguably one of hockey's all-time greatest goalies. Dominik Hasek is a five-time Vezina Trophy winner and an Olympic gold medalist. In 2002, he retired after winning the Stanley Cup with the Detroit Red Wings. He said he had accomplished his goal and wanted to focus on raising his family.
Author/Pastor Charles Stanley says, "As long as our contentment can be destroyed by a change in our environment, we can never be content in any circumstance. Such is the fragile nature of externally oriented contentment."
In Stanley's Handbook for Christian Living, he adds, "Much of our discontentment stems from not getting what we want ... As long as our peace and joy hinge on getting what we want, we are on an emotional roller coaster."
After his unforgettable, history-making goal in the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series, Paul Henderson admits he was lost. "The years between 1973 and 1975 weren't a very good time for me," he says in his biography Shooting for Glory. "I didn't know who I was, or where I was going in my life."
Henderson tells Living Light News, "The goals I pursued - they're worthy goals. I always wanted to have a good marriage relationship, to be successful, to have money and security. I wanted to do something that I wanted to do, and I was fortunate, I got them. The thing I forgot in all of that is the spiritual dimension."
That changed in 1975 when the hockey legend became a Christian. "It was a two-year process," says Henderson. "I spent hundreds of hours looking at it and I realized I wanted it." He was 32 when he invited Jesus into his life, and he says, "it was the spiritual dimension that closed the loop."
Today Henderson heads up The Leadership Group, a ministry focused on mentoring and discipleship. He brings his on-ice experience and his journey with Jesus to the stage.
"We have an outreach breakfast. I share my faith journey and I invite people who want to talk about it to see me later," says Henderson. "In my own group, there are three new guys in their 40s who had never opened a Bible and now they're opening it and seeing a big difference."
Those who come to hear Henderson speak now are not necessarily hockey fans. They come from different backgrounds, different lifestyles.
"I don't work with hockey players at all any more, it seems that God has called me to a different venue. I never thought I'd be working with businessmen; I thought I'd be working with athletes for awhile, but God's ways are not our ways," he says.
"There are a lot of people who need a place to ask questions and they really want answers," says Henderson. "We try to provide a forum where they can ask the questions.
"In 1985, we started with three men and now we have 80 groups and about 500 men, mainly in the greater Toronto area," says Henderson. He's working on bringing this program out west.
The Leadership Group is under the umbrella of Campus Crusade for Christ, along with Athletes in Action, and Family Life. Henderson and his wife, Eleanor, are also involved in marriage ministry. They're helping couples find the contentment that comes from within, from knowing God. As Henderson found, it begins when we invite Jesus Christ into our heart.
"I wasn't content with all the things I had. I was restless. And then, when I found the Lord, I had an inner quietness, and it was wonderful," he says.
"[Contentment] is something we learn by adhering to the basics - cultivating a growing relationship with Jesus Christ, living daily, and knowing that Christ strengthens us for every challenge," says Stanley.
He adds, "Contentment is trusting God even when things seem out of control."
The Bible says that when people who know the living God personally - through His Son Jesus Christ - serve and obey Him, they will spend their days in prosperity and their years in contentment (Job 36:11).
Satisfaction guaranteed.
