I once heard a formula guaranteed to prevent boredom. It is to have
1. Something to do
2. Someone to love
3. Something to look forward to
The Christian has all these in Christ: work, a Master, a hope. Yet how easily we forget this. One of the results of the Fall is that we lose sight of the meaning of things and begin to see the world as dull and opaque, instead of charged with glory. What other people are doing looks much more interesting and exciting than what we have to do. There is no “magic” in my routine, we think but hers looks enviable. . .
Even the work of writing (“Christian” books!) can become dull. It looks wonderfully exciting to many. I know, because they come to me with eyes shining and speak of how wonderful it must be.
“I’m hoping to write a book someday,” they say, “when I have time … when the children are grown … when I retire.”
I encourage them to do it, by all means. But if they ask if I love to write, is it pure pleasure, do I ever find it hard, I must admit that for me the process is always hard. I must make myself tackle it, day after day.
Yesterday, for example, was bad. I had the whole day to myself, in a quiet place. There was not the slightest chance, barring some dire emergency, of any interruptions. I knew what I had to do. I had notes prepared. I had the typewriter, the paper, the place to work. I am in excellent health. The temperature was perfect-not too hot, not too cold. If you can’t work under conditions like these, you can’t work at all. I kept telling myself this.
But I did not feel like working. That’s what it came down to. I was restless, distracted, and disgusted with myself. I wondered if I had “shot my bolt,” as the English say. Maybe I really had nothing to say after all. It had all been said, of course, and maybe it had all been said by me. I was repeating myself. Alas. Furthermore, if it hadn’t been said, what did I know about it anyway? . . .
The job that surely is one of the world’s pleasantest does not always hold much appeal to the one whose job it happens to be. This is the very point we need to get hold of–the enemy has plenty of means of dulling the shine, distracting us, making us bored with whatever is given us to do. Making it appear worthless. It is difficult to keep in mind the spiritual character of our work (for there is spiritual character to all work that God gives. It requires spiritual protection. “Organizations and powers that are spiritual” are against us, to drag us down to discouragement, disgust, despair.
“And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands” must be our prayer. We need help. We may write the book, sell the policy, cook the meal, do the job, whatever it is, but there will be days when we do it halfheartedly, other days when we do it despondently. If the work is soaked in prayer, the beauty will be there, the work will be established.
**Excerpt originally published in Joyful Surrender, pp.122-125