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The Rev. Christopher Brdlik
June 24, 2007 --- Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Events this week reminded me of another week in June, about a dozen years ago, also the last week of school. Son Ben was finishing the fourth grade. On the final half-day of classes, I picked him up around noon. Exiting the school parking lot Ben leaned the upper part of his body out through the open window (until I told him to sit down and put on his seat-belt), shouting, “I’m free! I’m free!” His friends on the sidewalk yelled back, “I’m free! I’m free!” We drove home, got out of the car, and I puttered around the garage waiting for lunch. About 15 minutes later — 15 minutes! — Ben appeared at the door of the garage and declared, “I’m bored.” 

The connection between freedom and boredom is confirmed by reports I’ve read of surveys given to teenagers about their attitudes toward life and their opinions about the places they live. It won’t surprise you to learn that adolescents living in small towns and rural areas report that they are bored, that there is nothing to do where they live. Just about the same is true for suburban youth. Here’s the surprise: teens living in Manhattan also report they are bored with their lives and say they have nothing to do. And this isn’t just true of American kids. An interview on Public Radio during the Balkan War discussed life with a teenager living in Sarajevo as her beautiful city collapsed into conflict around her. The interviewer sensitively pulled a description from the girl of the details of daily existence as family and friends, neighborhood and country were threatened with violence, even death. She matter-of-factly told him what it was like to live in conflict. Then the interviewer asked her how she felt about this. She replied, “I’m bored.” My jaw dropped. So, I think, did the interviewer’s. 

What does this tell us? The nexus between freedom and boredom, or conflict and boredom, is shared by many adolescents who seem unable to discover the defining spark of life, the spirit-force of soul, within the daily rounds and routines of their homes and existences. Many feel uninspired. Many express discontent about circumstances actually quite different from each other across a wide spectrum of human experiences. They don’t seem able to hear the voice of God. 

But do you know what? I suspect that’s true of many of us adults as well. Though I don’t have surveys to back it up, nor anecdotes to illustrate it, how readily do any of us hear and heed God’s personal call to believers? The nexus between life and boredom may be part of a pattern that does not disappear with age or maturity. Call it entropy, the loss of energy and life-force in any object or being as it winds down through the passing of time. Whether it’s too much freedom — as in school vacation — or too much conflict — as in the drama of war — entropy acts to slow us toward boredom, unless we have an infusion of God’s energy in our vision for life. Through entropy, daily routines, whatever they are, crowd out our listening to God. 

There’s an answer to the problem of entropy presented in the fascinating story of the prophet Elijah hidden in a cave on Mount Horeb. (I Kings 19) Now talk about conflict: Elijah had just engaged in a dramatic contest with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, said to be the worst rulers in all the history of the Bible. Elijah had challenged Jezebel’s pagan religion, and criticized Ahab for allowing it. He had ridiculed the prophets of Baal, the pagan deity, and finally slain them all with the sword. (This is from a part of the Bible when they were still doing a lot of slaying and smiting.) Though Elijah won the challenge, it looked as if he might have lost the war. For Jezebel was still powerful enough to threaten him, and cause him to escape to the wilderness.  

At least he had the good sense to flee to the holy mountain of God. But I have always thought that he was feeling sorry for himself. Entropy had driven him to the point of exhaustion. He had defeated the false prophets. He had upheld the religion of Israel. Shouldn’t God now reward him? Didn’t he deserve a better fate than to be threatened by Jezebel? Sitting at the cave tired, discouraged and alone, Elijah was about to experience yet even more drama in his life. For a great wind came and shattered the rocks and ridges around him. But God wasn’t in the wind. Then came an earthquake, but God wasn’t there either; nor in the fire that followed — God was not in the fire. Here’s the secret: a still small voice, a sound of sheer silence — that was God. 

After the drama of conflict and the loneliness of boredom, Elijah discovered God as a subtle, secret voice encountered, apparently, when he allowed the inner noise of his life to be quieted. He was in solitude, yes — always a good setting for spiritual enlightenment. But hearing the voice of God doesn’t require solitude or a holy mountain — what’s needed is personal sensitivity to God’s subtlety. I’d say God is always there, whether we’re feeling free, conflicted or bored. Some kind of sharp retuning of our spiritual receptors opens us up to the still, small voice of God. Cutting out the noise around us — or more importantly, maybe, cutting out the noise within us — sensitizes the human soul for contact with its divine creator. Too many of us are too pre-occupied with ourselves that we do not encounter the subtlety of God. Too many of us allow entropy to draw us away from God’s presence. 

Here in June, at the end of school and the start of summer, it seems wise for me to recommend a conscious effort on your part to respond to the silent sound of God. Sometime during the fireworks of July and the dog-days of August, create a personal time to listen for your creator. Even if you aren’t bored with life — and congratulations for that if it’s true! — God wants to speak with you, God has something to share with you. But if we do not approach the spirit-force with an appreciation of its subtlety, we may not hear it. You’re free to do otherwise, of course. But God would love to talk with you. For God wants to be at the nexus of your life.

© copyright 2007, Christopher Brdlik

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