Beat boredom by keeping busy

May be the work was tedious and unrewarding; it could have happened that try as we might we did not succeed in the task undertaken. Or it may just be that we have nothing much to do. We are bored!

They say the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. This is what happened to good king David. He had conquered territories and expanded his boundaries; he had acquired much wealth. What more is to be done? He had built magnificent palaces for himself; he wanted to build a temple for God but God would not allow. There was nothing much to look forward to and he was bored; he needed excitement and that was the beginning of his troubles. The Bible tells me that he got up lazily from his siesta in the afternoon and in this lazy moment he looked out from his high roof and saw a beautiful woman bathing in her compound.

He lusted after her and after hearing of her name and the name of her husband who was with David’s army fighting a border skirmish, he had her brought to him and committed adultery and when she conceived and reported it to David, he tried to wipe out his guilt by further sin of deception and descended to even getting Uriah the husband killed and took his wife for himself.

All this happened because he was bored. He was punished by God for what he did (cf. II Samuel chapters 11 & 12). Should we allow ourselves to be bored? One should learn to keep oneself busy at all times. We are told of some anchorites or hermits in the Egyptian deserts who were living far removed from human habitation and survived on the food they could scrounge and spent the time in prayer and meditation.

But they also kept themselves busy at other times by doing some work or other e.g., by making baskets from the reeds available but once their cave was full of these baskets, because there was no one to buy them or gift them to, would burn them in a bonfire and begin all over again.

How many wrong doings could be avoided if we learn to keep ourselves busy with so many things? No one should say I have nothing to do.

But there are also days when God expects us to rest from our labour, at least to meditate on him or enjoy simple relaxation so that we are ready for the next week’s work. God wants us to enjoy our life and be happy while we live on this earth and come to enjoy with him even more in heaven.

So God’s wish is that we learn to move from joy to joy but for this we need a well cultivated mind and heart. The sorrows themselves do not destroy the joyful person because he enjoys a joy which no one can take away from him (Cf. John 16.22)