The Meaningful Mundane (3 of 4)
Series: The Good
Ross Lester
Psalm 127
Intro:
Sanibonani, Dumelang, Goie Middag, Good Afternoon.
Welcome to Week 3 of a 4-week series called The Good Life.
It has been a chance to examine a theology of happiness, contentment and joy.
In week one we looked at the ''why'' of happiness. God himself is happy and his people have more reason for happiness than anyone else. It is quite disarming. We expect to find in the scriptures a bunch of commands against happiness, and yet there many, many instructions calling us to be glad in God. Last week we looked at two primary areas where we are tempted to look for happiness. The one is who we are, and the other is what we have. We spoke of contentment in who we are and with what we have as the gospel key for happiness in those areas.
This week we want to look at happiness in what we do. The things that occupy our limited time. The truth is that most of us go from here every week to lives that are largely routine and pretty mundane if we are honest. It feels like we can experience happiness in fleeting moments in things that fall outside of that routine mundanity (events, holidays etc.), but a lot of our life, in fact most of our life, is spent grinding through things. We might find that if we polled the room, many of us would agree with the Psalmist when he laments in Psalm 127:
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
If you think about your routine too much you could get a bit bleak, and people do, and they either give in to despair, or they seek meaning outside of the routine, in a midlife crisis, or affair, or comfort eating, or binge TV watching, or anything that will stop the existential dread from setting in.
This is what the writer of Ecclesiastes pondered in his heart when he said from Ecclesiastes 2:
20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the ...
Series: The Good
Ross Lester
Psalm 127
Intro:
Sanibonani, Dumelang, Goie Middag, Good Afternoon.
Welcome to Week 3 of a 4-week series called The Good Life.
It has been a chance to examine a theology of happiness, contentment and joy.
In week one we looked at the ''why'' of happiness. God himself is happy and his people have more reason for happiness than anyone else. It is quite disarming. We expect to find in the scriptures a bunch of commands against happiness, and yet there many, many instructions calling us to be glad in God. Last week we looked at two primary areas where we are tempted to look for happiness. The one is who we are, and the other is what we have. We spoke of contentment in who we are and with what we have as the gospel key for happiness in those areas.
This week we want to look at happiness in what we do. The things that occupy our limited time. The truth is that most of us go from here every week to lives that are largely routine and pretty mundane if we are honest. It feels like we can experience happiness in fleeting moments in things that fall outside of that routine mundanity (events, holidays etc.), but a lot of our life, in fact most of our life, is spent grinding through things. We might find that if we polled the room, many of us would agree with the Psalmist when he laments in Psalm 127:
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
If you think about your routine too much you could get a bit bleak, and people do, and they either give in to despair, or they seek meaning outside of the routine, in a midlife crisis, or affair, or comfort eating, or binge TV watching, or anything that will stop the existential dread from setting in.
This is what the writer of Ecclesiastes pondered in his heart when he said from Ecclesiastes 2:
20 So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the ...
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