Day Twenty

Day Twenty // March 19 // Laziness

“A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.” – Benjamin Franklin –

Sometimes, a preacher crosses over from preaching to meddling. We feel that way with today’s topic: laziness. How often are there good things we want to do, things we know that need to be done, but we just don’t know where to start. Maybe it demands too much of us. Maybe we’re unsure if we have the right resources. With all our reasons and all our excuses, we let ourselves off the hook and allow all our good intentions to remain just that. And we really don’t want to call ourselves lazy; we prefer to say that we suffer from “work-avoidance syndrome.”

We chuckle when we see laziness as a part of the human condition. We remember the story from 50 years ago: two older gentlemen were discussing the new technology of TV remote controls. One man was just put out. He said, “That is one luxury I can live without. It’s a sad day when I get so lazy that I can’t tell my wife or son to get up and change the channel.” And, though we may grin at that, the disease of laziness – physical, emotional, and spiritual – is no laughing matter.

Do we own our individual struggles with laziness? Do we accept that we, oftentimes, avoid God’s call and claim on our lives? We do not eat freely of the fruit of kindness that always puts intentions into action and service. We forget that God wired us to spend a lifetime of doing good for the Kingdom. In the Christian plan, there is no retirement until heaven. Armand Hammer, the industrialist who died in 1990, at the age of 92, was once asked how a man his age had the energy to continually circle the globe to conduct business. He said, “I love my work. I can’t wait to start a new day. I never wake up without being full of ideas. Everything is a challenge.”

Lent calls us to reflect. True meaning and joy come from doing and serving. God has given us a job to do; we all have a sacred calling. We need to discern what that is, and then we need to get busy following that call. Our goal should be to live in the spirit of Hunter Thompson

who wrote: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’”