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Day 38 - Issue 17 - 17/08/16
Ecclesiastes 1:8a NLT
'Everything is wearisome beyond description.'
It’s a terrible admission, but I sometimes get bored of life. Some mornings, as I enter consciousness, my heart lies heavy within me and it takes effort and courage to stir from my bed and engage with the day. I’m not exactly feeling depressed, just bored with the tedium of creating a packed lunch, cooking breakfast, and then all the necessary repetitive activities that managing daily life requires of me. I feel guilty, for my pain is that of monotony.
The scripture today is apt, since the vocabulary to explain such weariness is unavailable to the writer, and I too cannot precisely describe what I feel, yet I do feel it most acutely. Perhaps it reveals that life’s cycle at the domestic level offers little inspiration, and demands grit and determination to make it through on occasion.
On reflection, I require that life offer me more than it does. I anticipate some deeper reality which I fail to encounter, and so the imagined wonder drains away. Like Christmas, where the challenge of delivering food, fun and celebration becomes exhausting, the day can easily turn into one of endurance ahead of enjoyment.
Sobered by my feelings, I have learned to seek the reality of Christ’s presence within the daily round of activities that mark out my week. When I can, I seek Christ in the depth of my tedium. What’s more, I plan to participate in the tedious repetitions of the daily grind as an act of selfless service to God. Then creating a packed lunch becomes an activity of meditating upon Christ and servanthood in which I find God rather than my own listlessness.
We are invited to seek God in every detail of our lives, however wearisome life feels, and remind ourselves that life without the close presence of God can only ever be both monotonous and tedious.
QUESTION: Has life become wearisome or monotonous? If so, why do you think that is?
PRAYER: Lord, you didn’t promise me excitement all the time, but you did promise to be present in everything. Thank you; be close to me today, I pray.
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By PremierEcclesiastes 1:8a NLT
'Everything is wearisome beyond description.'
It’s a terrible admission, but I sometimes get bored of life. Some mornings, as I enter consciousness, my heart lies heavy within me and it takes effort and courage to stir from my bed and engage with the day. I’m not exactly feeling depressed, just bored with the tedium of creating a packed lunch, cooking breakfast, and then all the necessary repetitive activities that managing daily life requires of me. I feel guilty, for my pain is that of monotony.
The scripture today is apt, since the vocabulary to explain such weariness is unavailable to the writer, and I too cannot precisely describe what I feel, yet I do feel it most acutely. Perhaps it reveals that life’s cycle at the domestic level offers little inspiration, and demands grit and determination to make it through on occasion.
On reflection, I require that life offer me more than it does. I anticipate some deeper reality which I fail to encounter, and so the imagined wonder drains away. Like Christmas, where the challenge of delivering food, fun and celebration becomes exhausting, the day can easily turn into one of endurance ahead of enjoyment.
Sobered by my feelings, I have learned to seek the reality of Christ’s presence within the daily round of activities that mark out my week. When I can, I seek Christ in the depth of my tedium. What’s more, I plan to participate in the tedious repetitions of the daily grind as an act of selfless service to God. Then creating a packed lunch becomes an activity of meditating upon Christ and servanthood in which I find God rather than my own listlessness.
We are invited to seek God in every detail of our lives, however wearisome life feels, and remind ourselves that life without the close presence of God can only ever be both monotonous and tedious.
QUESTION: Has life become wearisome or monotonous? If so, why do you think that is?
PRAYER: Lord, you didn’t promise me excitement all the time, but you did promise to be present in everything. Thank you; be close to me today, I pray.