This is the 6th installment of the THEOLOGY OF FUN blog series that Heather Zempel and I are doing. If you haven't read the previous ones, you should here, here, here, here, & here!!!
How often do you take the same route to work?
Do you go to the same restaurant and order the same thing over and over again?
We tend to be beings of habit and routine. Change is often viewed as a bad
thing, and a lot of people don’t like it.
But what happens is we get caught in the trap
of the mundane and the routine. We wonder why we are tired, cranky, or wonder
what is wrong with us, but what happens is that we have forgotten to find joy
in all situations, or we have forgotten to be intentional with having fun. We
have to remember that having fun and finding joy is a discipline. Fun and
Adventures don’t just happen, you have to be intentional about the way you
talk, the words you speak and also being intentional about keeping your perspective
in finding the fun in the mundane.
My problem is I think I live a mundane life.
Almost TOO mundane, but I have worked hard to change the way I see things to make
things fun and random and adventurous. One of the verses that I keep going back
to is James 1:2-4, “Count
it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for
you know that the testing of your faith produces
steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may
be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
Count it
all joy. ALL things – finding ways to find joy in the little things and in the
big things, the easy things, and the hard things. Counting joy when it hurts. One of the ways that I try to
count all things joy is calling everything that I do an adventure. My
definition of adventure is doing things where you don’t know the outcome. And
in all actuality – most things we do we don’t know the outcome. Your trip to
Ikea could be considered an adventure – you don’t know how what could happen,
or an early adventure to the airport to pick up friends - you JUST never know
what’ll happen (You could get pulled over by the police officer, or followed closely by the same officer). It could be easy to see everything you do as a chore, but when you add the element of adventure, and an unexpected ending, the options are endless!
My friend
Alexa and I were really good at creating adventures within the mundane. When we
were overwhelmed with work, we would stop and have a 4 minute dance party. If
we needed a change, we would get in the car and make cards real fast with
directions to stop, turn right, turn left, chinese firedrill, or make a U-turn…just
to see where randomness would take us. Does that seem silly or stupid? Maybe. But its taking the mundane and turning it around and making it an adventure! We didn't know the outcome of those things, and a lot of times, it meant we were laughing hysterically at our stupidity.
There will
never be the “perfect” situations. Life doesn't roll like that. Something is always bound to go
differently than you expected, good or bad. And it all lies within the
perspective you CHOOSE to have. Do you find ways to choose the joy in each and every situation?
Sometimes it’s choosing to go a
different way to work, and noticing new things in your neighborhood, or taking the long way to thank God for the situations you are in. I mean, if you want to try something new, trying to brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand! And tell me that you didn't giggle at your inability to do it well.
Afterall... Joy
is a choice.
(even while brushing your teeth...)
Fun is a
choice.
How are
you choosing to have fun in the mundane situations that you have?
Jenilee, it wasn't till the week before I graduated college that I discovered the best BBQ place in town. On a recent work project, I didn't discover the quickest route home until my last day - and that was because of a detour! What can I say, some of us are creatures of habit! On the other hand, I'll never forget the game of "ultimate pine cone" my Army unit played passing the boring hours until our turn to qualify on the machine guns before heading to Iraq. The people who complained the loudest at us unprofessional fun-lovers were the same ones who wanted to join us if we ever deployed again.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the good word!