The Cottage of Content

The Cottage of Content

I enjoy using my mother’s collection of mis-matched blue plates, and keep them in the same sideboard she inherited from her family at the time of her wedding in 1932. 

One plate is one stamped with “Royal Staffordshire Ceramics” on the back.  A pastoral scene is displayed on the front – a simple English-looking cottage stands on the right, perhaps with a thatched roof, and hollyhock-like flowers grow near the door that faces a dirt road. On the left a tree bends appropriately to fit the round contour of the plate.  The following lines are inscribed:

“As I was wandering o’er the green

Not knowing where I went,

By chance I saw a pleasant scene

The cottage of content.”

I’ve tried to find the author of this quote, but so far no luck.  I did discover a verbatim reproduction of it online, which verifies that it probably is not unique to the plate alone, although no credits were given.

In my search, I did find another reference to “the cottage of content” in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens:

“Miss Mills replied, on general principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.”

I’ve been thinking about living in the cottage of content despite inevitable challenges, especially those fraught with pain.  I am grateful for, and hope to be satisfied with, a small but adequate cottage (an icon of simplicity) inhabited by divine love.

“Christian contentment is a conviction that Christ’s power, purpose, and provision are sufficient for any circumstance. In its simplest terms, contentment is saying out loud in your heart and soul: ‘I have Christ and that is enough.’” – Rob Kuban