So many reruns, so little time!

“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest,”
-Proverbs 6:10

We could almost rewrite this warning against laziness to add a few modern conveniences. A little Facebook, a little television, a little movie-going, a little Wii, etc. Our time rests better than any other times. In the great scheme of history, our 40-hour work week isn’t terribly much. There usually isn’t too much to do around the house either. Modern conveniences have made cooking and cleaning much easier than in past generations. We don’t have many intellectual or spiritual pursuits. Our evenings are typically filled up with entertainment.

It is easy to see how too much of that corrupts us. Just look around. We have overweight children all over the place. I mean, I’m overweight now, but I couldn’t have been back then. Everything I wanted to do involved running! As many medical advancements as we have made in the last decades, heart disease still ranks as the number one killer in America.

We are drowning in debt, partially because we charge all of our entertainment, and partially because we’re not working hard enough to pay it off.

In the Church, we have malnourished congregations. So few (and even few preachers) take the time to try to understand our faith or our God. We go to listen to the music and get a pep talk, or to have the preacher tell us we’re awesome and we’re going to be rich.

Instead, the television becomes our little false gods. We turn every chair in the living toward it as though it were an altar, and we set our lives according to what it is going to show.

Slothfulness is a sin, and it’s a sin for exactly that reason. It causes you to focus inwardly only, to seek after your own pleasures and comfort, rather than outward toward God and toward others.

The effects of this sin can be seen on every street, in every company, and in every church. We have lost the will to make an effort.

These things may seem minor, but they are not. Laziness has an effect on your life, and it has an effect on your relationship with God. Worst of all, when we are lazy, we are rejecting God in favor of ourselves. We are rebelling against Him and His Law so that we can watch some mindless show on television. I mean, if my wife did that to me, I would be offended! If I had asked for an evening together, and she declined so that she could watch a rerun of Seinfeld, I’d be pretty hacked off.

But God is more deserving still, and we were created for His glory.

I am far too often in error over this one. I am far too often putting in a DVD when I should be reading the Word. It’s not that we should not rest. Obviously, we must sleep. God has set aside a day every week for rest as well. But we take that rest and spread it around to every evening and every day. We live for it!

Because of Jesus’ death upon the Cross, we can be forgiven even of this sin. Even though we turn away from Him in favor of playing on Facebook all day, yet still He would forgive us if we would turn from that in repentance and faith. He paid the price we owe when He was upon that Roman Cross. He paid the price even for the sin of ignoring Him.

We all, at times, are a little more interested in rest than we should be. But God has offered His life in our place so that we can be forgiven.