Tuesday, November 24, 2015

TUESDAY LEISURE, A BLESSING OR A CURSE?

Starting on my other blog ONE A DAY, YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS on Nov 1...a 3 day series on HOW TO LESSEN ANXIETY.

            click on the link below

 A different sermon is begun on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. 

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       The sermons found on this blog are selected sermons preached by Rev. Wyrick during a ministry of over 50 years.  This syndicated columnist/minister thanks you for visiting.

TO GO TO NEIL’S OTHER BLOG ONE A DAY, YOUR SPIRITUAL VITAMINS and read inspiring stories and comments to set you thinking. CLICK ON URL BELOW

 

Mark 8:36 

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forget his soul?

There’s a joke that must be almost as old as Eden.  It reads, “My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty.  She’s ninety now and we have no idea where she is.” 

All such laughter-moments usually make a point as well as tickle your funny bone.  In this case, the object lesson is that if she was walking toward somewhere to accomplish a particular job, then what she was doing was work.  If she was just walking to enjoy the company of Mother Nature, it was leisure.  If she was walking to work and enjoying the experience, it was attitude.   

       Would you make leisure a blessing rather than a curse?  Then study your attitude toward God and the life He gave you.  Study how to improve yourself.  Life is too great a gift to waste either on too much work or too much leisure.  And without the proper balance, you will very soon fall flat and hurting upon your unsuspecting face.

       A couple of weeks ago it was reported in the newspaper and on TV that two teenagers stomped and beat a homeless man to death.  Callously brought death to another human being without a second thought.  Their reason?  They were bored.  In other words, too much leisure time and much too little sense of God and godliness. 

But then, some adults find leisure time hard to fill constructively.  And when they are bored they do all kind of things that prove they are worshiping at the altar of senselessness.  Bored? What to do with time on your hands?  Binge drink.  Bored?  Gamble away your hard earned money.  Bored?  Try drugs.  Bored?  Trade in the old house for a new and fancier one.  Bored?  Trade in an old car not because the mileage is high but because your boredom is high.

For the bored, leisure time can truly become a curse.   

Whether teenager or retired, boss or bossed, work-at-home or go-out-to-work mom or dad - whatever is your role in life, the word leisure constantly comes into play. 

How best to beat off boredom and fill up free time in a manner that is satisfying and fulfilling.  And therein lies a blessing or therein lies a curse.  Webster’s dictionary defines leisure as “freedom, or spare time, provided by the cessation of activities…free times as the result of temporary exemption from work or duties…time at one’s command that is free of engagements or responsibilities…one’s own time, at one’s convenience…rest.”

Sounds wonderful, I think most of you would agree. Yet did you know that the average family today never puts together more than 9 consecutive vacation days in a year’s 365?  

That only 46% of employed adults will take five business days in a row off?  That only 20% of summer trips this year will last for seven or more consecutive nights?

 “Got to get back to work you know.”  415 million vacation days will go unused this year because workers feel they are too busy to take them, or they are afraid to take them and be thought of as a slacker, or… you fill in the blanks.  As you might well expect, someone has come up with a name for it - VACATION DEFICIT DISORDER.

In describing children at play, Will Durant once wrote, “What purposes move these children to their wild activity?  What secret desire sustains their energy?  None; the play is the thing and these games are their own reward.”

       When is the last time you took off your shoes and wiggled them in the mud in a sparkling stream for no other reason than it was there and you wanted to?  Can you remember when you traded in the wild-eyed curiosity of a child for the sedate, respectable, sometimes truncated attitudes of an adult? 
 
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Recent articles Rev. Wyrick has written for this web site are: 
 
·         Here Comes Summer (July 2012)
·         Spring (May 2012)
·         Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow (April 2012)
·         Wayward and Windy (April 2012)
 
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       "Positive, powerful utterances...skillfully enhancing our understaning and appreciation of Lincoln...(Lt. Colonel C.A.Olsen (Ret.) Asbury College (Professor Ret.)
 
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