By: Duncan Robinson
I’ve felt recently like I’m stuck in a rut. The routine of life, the regularity of it all.
I’m peeking around corners and looking for a surprise, wondering when the next mystery is going to come. I’m waiting for the next big thing and feverishly looking for a way to make it happen.
I feel like I’m plodding through cold molasses.
Ice-skating uphill.
Yet an assessment of everything close to home seems to suggest everything is going well. Family feels good, marriage is good, things are good. Good house, good kids, good job, good marriage.
Could they be better, yes.
Everyone would answer that question the same. I wonder if consumerism has gotten the better of me. I wonder if the insatiable desire for more is distracting me from what I have.
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.
I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away. – Ecc 3:9 – 15
Finding joy in the ‘now’
It’s not a particularly big dream, it’s a small one, a simple one. One simple idea for life that is directly proportional to whatever your plot, wherever it is. That you might find joy and do good all the days of your life. That you might find pleasure in the toil of what you do.
Joy is not connected to the size of the plot, or the items in the plot, or what the plot might look like in the future. Joy as a precious gift is available now, exactly where you are.
Perhaps the plot contains joy, right now. It isn’t dependent on speed or the next big thing, it isn’t about the future or the past. It is present right in this very moment.
In this season.
That joy and goodness isn’t dependent on possessions or consumerism, but something far deeper and more profound. The joy of doing good, and enjoying the work that you do right now.
Article supplied with thanks to Duncan Robinson.
About the Author: Duncan Robinson is a radio host, pastor, husband and father of two.