December 12 - Colossians 1-4: Tuned In to the Message

"I'm bored."  Since they were little, I've responded to this declaration from my girls with the same statement, "Boredom is a choice."  They can choose to be bored and enjoy not having something they have to do.  Or they can choose to get involved in something.  It's up to them.  Now they laugh when they say it to me because they know my reply.

I understand the statement and have mentally felt it myself, especially at the end of December when the stress of the semester is gone and the holiday activities have subsided.  No more urgent matters staring me in the face, the anticipation of the Christmas break is over and it can take awhile to figure out what to do with myself.

Larry Crabb makes the same declaration in regard to life,

"Father, I'm struggling with boredom.  Nothing excites me.  I feel no deep passion for anything, including - I hate to say it - You, Your Son, or Your plan....

"I think You've been telling me that if I admit to how bored I am; if I face the fact that I don't always have now what I really wish I had, like feelings of excitement and passion; if I accept the idea that You won't provide in this life the level of continuous satisfaction that I want and that, sometimes - for no discernible reason - You allow blessings I do enjoy to be withdrawn; and if I make no effort to numb the ache I feel or fill the void inside me that screams for fullness; then Your Son and what He accomplished on the cross will mean more to me than ever before.  I think You're telling me that Your Spirit will then seize the opportunity provided by my boredom to let me rest in a holy thirst for what's lacking in this life but promised in the next - for what I can taste now but will fully enjoy then."  (66LL)

So, what is God's response when we honestly declare, "I'm bored?"

"Place no hope in the experience of satisfaction now.  If you do, you are shifting away from the hope held out in the gospel of My Son.  You will then disfigure the Christian life into a search for a fullness of felt spiritual reality and complete freedom from evil's power that together promise to provide the life you've always wanted in this world.

"That is not the Christian life.  To believe that it is blurs and discounts what My Son accomplished in His death and resurrection."  (66LL)

You yourselves are a case study of what he does.  At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of him, giving him trouble every chance you got.  But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God's side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence.  You don't walk away from a gift like that!  You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the message, careful not to be distracted or diverted.  There is no other Message - just this one.  (1:21-23)

Father, when the unwrapped presents don't satisfy, when the reactions of others to my gifts don't meet my expectation, when family time is less than meaningful, when I'm bored with my life, guard my heart from believing false teaching that tells me I can figure out or achieve fullness in this life(2:11).  Thank You for Your Spirit who draws me to hope and thirst in You, "to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him.  When [I] come to him, that fullness comes together for [me], too.  His power extends over everything" (2:10).