Is It Going to Be Boring?

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3.1-13


Anytime the Morris’ family is going someplace, the first question that comes up is, “Is it going to be boring?” And sometimes the boys ask this question too. Really, it’s the kids who are worried about being entertained all the time, especially when where we’re going or what we are doing is unfamiliar to them.

The worst thing that can be said of a place or event, in their minds, is, “It was boring.” The place could be expensive, stupid, or dangerous, as long as it’s not boring. You could say to them – we are going to this place where you will be dunked in a big tub of goo, covered in live maggots, and then hung upside down by your toes, and they would say, “cool.” Just so it’s not boring.

In a culture of round the clock entertainment and new tech toys seemingly every week, we are amusing ourselves to death. And we are still bored. “We are bored because we’re overstimulated rather than understimulated,” says Richard Winter.

Everyone gets bored from time to time. But boredom is not a problem of circumstance but of attitude and spirit. When we are bored, we are bored with ourselves. There is a disconnect between what our lives are and what we imagine they should be, even if that imagining is unrealistic or just plain wrong. When we are bored we are saying, “Life is disappointing. I am disappointing.”

And I think there is this connection between boredom and depression. Everyone gets depressed from time to time, or has experienced depression at some point in their lives. Some depression can simply be a rut of boredom that a person can’t get out of. We become depressed because we fail to see significance in the daily grind. We can no longer find meaning in activities small and large. The depression becomes serious, in fact, becomes despair, when we no longer see any hope that things will get better.

In dealing with the mild form of depression that oozes from boredom, this is perhaps a good place to start. We must reconnect the daily stuff of our lives with a larger framework of meaning and purpose. We must discover a story.


Let’s all confess and recognize that anything, and I mean anything, can become boring if we let it be so. Climbing Mt. Everest, kayaking the Colorado, jumping out of airplanes, even by accident, can become, almost mundane, if you do it enough times. The thrill factor exponentially decreases each time out. So if this is true of extreme adventure, what chance does your job have to keep your unflagging interest and enthusiasm day in and day out for say thirty or forty years? My son once expressed sympathy for me because I had to go to work at church every day, and I quote, “that must get boring.”

Sometimes change is needed, but more often, the key is to find meaning in the small and routine tasks that we do every day. This is a spiritual issue. Remember, when we are bored it is with ourselves, so the antidote to boredom can be found in ourselves, or more precisely, in finding our true selves through the One who made us.

This Creator says that every time, activity, season, feeling, beginning, ending, and middle has a time and purpose under heaven. Even polar opposites, such as love and hate, war and peace, have their time.

Likewise, buying groceries, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, doing reports ( a personal favorite of mine) each have their purpose. When we are bored, distracted, restless – these are times when we need to remind ourselves of the purpose of these things.

Maybe the purpose is “I want a clean house so that I can have a place of peace and beauty and safety.”

Maybe the purpose is, “I want to get these reports done so I can focus on new and creative ideas and solutions at work.”

Maybe the purpose is, “I want to get these chores done so I have time for special celebration and community.”

Last month Jennifer and I saw Alison Krause and Union Station in concert. It was a special treat for us, and being a bluegrass fan, especially for me. Anyway, Alison introduced her band members one by one, and when she got to her base player, she said, “Barry is a member of that special group of people who, about this time of year, get up very early, while it’s still dark, put on special clothing, go out into the woods, and wait.”
That got a laugh, but it reminded me how much I love to do that silly thing. I went out yesterday for late season muzzleloader, and I have to tell you, walking in the woods, I look at the ground and if I see “deer sign”, I get excited. Do you hear what I’m telling you? I get excited when I see a pile of deer poop.

The day before I do my chores with gusto and try to clean up around the house, because I know the nonhunting adult in our house will be more favorably disposed toward my hunting if I help with the housework. See, I have connected dishes and laundry with the bigger picture of passion and hope. It can get boring in the woods too, but there again, I connect the time to the story of what might happen that day, what I might see, who I was with, and what we talked about. I enjoy hunting because I rarely do it alone. It is community for me.

We need community in almost any way we can get it. Bored and depressed people are usually isolated and alone people. Community not only reconnects us with people, but with purpose as well. I am not alone. And I am not here just to serve myself. So when I see the context of my role, then the simple chore done over and over again, can still provide meaning, even joy.

G.K. Chesterton once said that God never gets bored making the sun to rise and set every day. Every day God says, “Do it again!” Children, also, love repetition in story and song. I once hid the Barney tapes in our house because I couldn’t bear to hear it again, but my kids could. We must rediscover this childlike joy in ritual and repetition.

“God has set eternity in the hearts of men and women; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” In other words, we can’t see the whole story yet, but we know it’s there, and we are a part of it. Our lives are moving on in purpose to a goal.

When we’ve done the laundry for the four thousandth time, and they still can’t clean out their pockets for us first, we might do well to remember this:

“I know that there is nothing better for men and women to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God.”