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Pastor's Page

Posted on February 23, 2006 ...

After an unusually mild January, recent days have brought us the coldest temperatures so far this winter. I even got to enjoy some significant snowfall a couple of weeks ago while I was in the mountains of North Carolina. To be honest, it does not take much cold to be plenty enough for me. I for one am ready for spring!
But I was not always so skittish about cold weather. When I was a boy my friends and I would spend hours outside playing, even on the coldest days. When the rare snowfall granted us the opportunity to break out our sleds, we heartily headed to the biggest hill in the neighborhood. Somehow, even though the temperature was cold and the snow was wet, we would spend hours climbing up and sledding down, often falling off during the decent. It was simple fun we managed to create ourselves.
I read recently that in today?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s culture people look to be entertained and blame things outside themselves when they are bored. We do not want the responsibility of finding something that interests us. Television, the internet, video games, movies, and any number of other items try to fill our desire to feel enthused about something. With all the options around us, is it not interesting that people still get bored? Kids with rooms full of toys say they have nothing to do. Teenagers given a multitude of options respond with the shrug of the shoulders as they sigh ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhatever.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù Adults spend the evening flipping through dozens of television channels that cannot hold their interest.
This sense of a need to be entertained seems to be a relatively new phenomenon. The word boredom did not even appear in the English language until the mid-1700?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s. I suspect that the demands of merely surviving in a rugged agricultural society left little time for dullness. There is also a theory that some feelings of boredom actually are not due to being under-stimulated, but rather because we are so overwhelmed with input and demands.
Yet, there are some redeemable qualities in boredom too. For example, boredom may well stimulate our creative abilities. Put children in a place where they are required to occupy their own time and they are likely to come up with all kinds of games, projects, and adventures. Also, tedium is more likely to prompt us to interact with another person rather than merely sitting alone in front of the television or computer screen. Finally, the quiet times can grant us moments of insightful and spiritual reflection we cannot gain otherwise. Jay