A few times I have had young children come to me, saying, “I’m bored. I don’t have anything to do.
What could I do?” I’ve been bored a few times, I guess. I don’t remember many, but I don’t remember ever in my life having nothing to do.
I have always been more like the person who says, “There just aren’t enough hours in the day, or enough days in the week to do all I need to do, or would like to do.”
I can’t say I was ever very successful in solving the children’s boredom. Usually my suggestions of things to do were met with, “Aw I don’t wanna do that!” or “That would be boring!” It doesn’t always work to suggest things that would be of interest to oneself, but, more to the point, I came to see boredom as a self-perpetuating mind trap.
When one gets into a bored mood, the mood itself makes everything sound boring, even brilliant ideas that might lend fascination and exciting discovery to one’s experience. So, rather than trying to suggest exciting things to do, it has seemed to me that we all need something big enough to live for that it buoys us above the petty boredoms of life. Sometimes just dealing with the everyday necessities may get to be a drag. We need a great overarching purpose that lends interest and challenge to life as a whole.
In Matthew 6:31-33, a part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying What shall we eat?
or What shall we drink? or What shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”
I hear Jesus saying in these words that when we become preoccupied with what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear, we are caught up in a vain way of living, a going nowhere way of living. He points his hearers to a greater thing to be occupied with, a greater interest, a greater challenge, a more creative way of living and responding to one’s opportunities - to pursue a vision of life as God inspires it. To become preoccupied with pursuits involving what to eat or drink or wear is to become susceptible to the ultimate boredoms because of the emptiness of it all, and to become susceptible to fleeting and unfulfilling excitements.
Do we need food? Do we need drink? Do we need clothes? Yes we do, as Jesus acknowledged, and as our heavenly Father knows.
But God didn’t give us life just to focus it around food intakes, or around what we drink, or around what we put on as coverings or adornments of the body.
As an old catechism of the church states, The chief end of man is to know God, and to enjoy him forever. In this light, life is more about relationships than things, more about caring about one another as God cares about all he has created, more about sharing with one another than about one’s acquisitions and the display of one’s adornments. It is a matter of priorities. Priorities, well chosen, have a way of putting our life and time together in wholesome, constructive ways. Life is better,less boring, less frustrating, more fulfilling.
One of the consequences of being involved with today’s communication technologies, is the ways those technologies have expanded the means by which our time can be wasted. For example, people trying to give us a sales spiel these days don’t have to wait for us to come into their stores or offices, or even take the time to call us personally on the phone. They can set up a machine recording which will call us in the middle of supper with those offers to lower the interest rate on our credit card, or help us buy the right insurance policy, or set us up with a second mortgage. If we are on the Internet and doing e-mailing, it is astounding the amount of spam one may receive; offers to get pills that will solve your problems (without a prescription); offers to get fake watches that will impress your friends when you go to parties. One might get the impression that the important thing is not being a sound person, with creative skills and beneficial occupations, but how you look and what kind of impression you make among your mixed up friends while you put on your empty show.
Jesus reintroduces us to the firsts, the greater priorities. It has much to do with exploring our Creator’s vision for human life, and discovering blessings in living out our Creator’s vision. When those come first, boredom has a way of being crowded out, and the joy of discovery is pushed to the front.
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Church, Pages 2 on 05/08/2013