The Secret

From J.E. Tada's More Precious than Silver,

The secret to contentment isn't really much of a secret. We know that contentment is all about leaning on Jesus. Of course, we don't automatically know the secret of being content: we have to learn it. If you are to know contentment---that quietness of the heart, supernaturally given, that gladly submits to God in all circumstances----you must undergo the learning process.
When Christ gives us the strength to tackle a painful situation, gaining contentment doesn't mean losing your sorrow or saying goodbye to discomfort. You can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing. You can have nothing yet posses everything. 

I have been reading Timothy Keller's Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (which you will get in more detail eventually, as it is in my work-book) that Christianity is unique in the fact that we look at suffering in a positive light. Most faiths consider suffering to be a punishment, or even imagined...yet there is Christianity. We continue to say that God is with us, and that anything we face is for a reason and used for good, although we do not yet see it. 
I like that there is such a standing difference in my faith---what Keller wrote is exactly how I feel facing anything I have faced. It is extraordinarily hard to face many of the things we face in life. Death. Illness. Loneliness. And so many ask why. Why God still allows it.
I can't answer that.I think perhaps that it is just because He created us to make whichever choice we want. His goal in creating us was to have everlasting worship--to create something wonderful by the stars, planets, animals---everything. Someone to share beauty with and watch the enjoyment in our souls. Have you not seen that on someone who is in absolute delight at something? The great look of peace, glowing eyes? It is the look I have seen rarely on a child---a very special look that is really not often seen.
Then we went ahead and chose to lean on ourselves. Life is impossible when we lean on ourselves. We literally fall apart with that effort, disease and death eventually consuming us and we cease to exist but in torment. Any good that happens without leaning on God happens purely because God is still in this world.
When we accept and lean on God, we begin to see the glimmer of what the world was and should have been---a place of pure beauty, peace, love, absolute glory of creation and the devastating wonder of the Lord Most Holy. It is like you get a breath of that when content within the Lord---something like walking past a highly scented flower on the wind. With that wonderful glory of God and what really is to come...anything on Earth is almost clouded from being as full of misery as could be. The power of the Lord is available, an endless source of strength, love, wisdom. The perfect port in the storm.