boredom: 34th week wednesday 2012II

In life there will always be a time when your resolve will be tested.  There will be times when you will be tempted to give up on the good that you have started.  There will be times when you will feel discouraged because of so many obstacles, so many trials, so many things to endure and you will begin thinking of giving up.  It is in this context that the Lord is telling us today, by your perseverance you will secure your lives. 

In all things perseverance counts a lot.  How far can you endure?  How far can your faith in yourself and in God can bring you?  This I believe is the greatest test that a person will have to face - endurance and perseverance.

Nowadays we can get easily bored.  You have been affected and influenced so much by today’s technology which presents you with so many choices.  Take television for example.  In my time a regular television has only twelve channels.  What I mean by twelve channels is there are only twelve numbers in the television dial.  There was no remote then - every time you transfer channels you have to get up from your seat and turn the dial - and you have to do it slowly because it could break.  Of the twelve channels only three have regular programs which starts at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and ends at 9 o’clock in the evening. 

Compare it with what we have today for example.  A regular television has 124 channels and if you have cable TV there are more than 70 channels to choose from.  So if you get bored with one, you can still have 69 other channels to choose from.  All these beside the fact that you have DVDs wherein you can watch you favorite shows.  Sometimes you will even find yourself watching two of three shows in just one sitting transferring from one channel to the other. – all these while you are holding your cell phone and texting somebody.  You can practically do so many things at one time.

In a way this makes it very easy to succumb to boredom.  It is very difficult now to persevere – to sit it out and to endure even in the midst of boredom.

Learn to live with boredom – because that is the only way you can form yourself to endure and persevere.  Learn to persevere.  Learn to endure because Jesus said that that is the only way we can secure our lives.