Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Deadly boredom

He was jogging along a road. Just jogging. Doing nothing to provoke. Just jogging. Pumping legs slowly, not running from nor to anything, as if time was a play thing he owned a hunk of in ways some of us never will. Till they took time away, stole time like it rested in a wallet chock full of tomorrows.

The teens couldn't find anything to do, apparently, so they did whatever came to mind., and a handgun was what came to mind. A gun. A bit of death warmed in a barrel of boredom and pain and death. Boredom reached up and grabbed them by the throat, and they surrendered to horror's seduction, to evil's desires, as if they had picked them up at a bar or something sinister.

The guy, just jogging on an Oklahoma August evening, was 22. Twenty two, with sunsets and sunrises right there waiting for him for the rest of his life. Yep, he will forever be 22, because he chose to go out jogging, and three imbeciles decided to fight boredom with murder.

I know some folks see them as kids, and think they smell teen spirit or something, but ultimately what they smell is the stink of stupid choices. They're 17, 16, 15. Ha. Teens. Read that slowly. SEVENTEEN YEARS OF AGE AND SIXTEEN YEARS OF AGE AND 15 YEARS OF AGE. Teens. And teens need to have things to do, as if playing chess would have kept the evil at bay.

What is the cost of boredom, plain boredom, sheer boredom, frightening boredom? Little to nothing to do boredom? Life lived cold and dead, lived empty and threatening, lived boring and useless?

Boredom reached up and grabbed four men, ended one life and ruined three.

Boredom speaks to futility, to emptiness. As Christians, to be bored, to own up to being bored, shouts into the winds of worship and says that even in the possibility of worship, we are empty. If we can find nothing else to do but praise God, that praise should never be boring. If we do nothing else but thank God, that gratitude should never be filled with boredom.

God says to his children in the prophet Malachi's writings, “... Instead of honoring me, you profane me. You profane me when you say, ‘Worship is not important, and what we bring to worship is of no account,’ and when you say, ‘I’m bored—this doesn’t do anything for me.’ You act so superior, sticking your noses in the air—act superior to me, God-of-the-Angel-Armies! And when you do offer something to me, it’s a hand-me-down, or broken, or useless. Do you think I’m going to accept it? This is God speaking to you!"

But if we can't find a single redeeming thing about praise, gratitude, worship, prayer, conversation with the living God who created us, if life is so worthless that it is boring, perhaps then we can see where this can lead.

They could find nothing to do in their lives, so they took someone else's. How sad, really sad, is that?

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