Good Friday morning! So the day wasn't marked or set aside, but apparently the week is undecided between National Son week and Sanctity of Life week. I can see at least one relationship between those two. I wonder if all 52 weeks are covered yet? We could have National Week Week to celebrate a special week for weeks....that's kind of weak. Anyway, I don't see anything on the calendar for today so we'll call it National Joy in the Lord Day, just for those of us who need a day set aside for that. If you read this and run to your search engine to type in something like: "What day is it today?" You really should find something productive to do with your time.
Not that anyone in this group of fine folks would do such a thing, but today is Fun at Work Day. Sorry to do that to you. Many of you have probably arrived at the conclusion that "fun" and "at work" are mutual antagonists. Your employer might have led you to believe this through years of verbal cues. At least the day occurs on a Friday; imagine the global outrage if some wag had decided Fun at Work Day (I even have trouble typing the thing!) should happen on a Monday! The protests in Egypt would look tame by comparison. The question must come though: Who gets to decide or declare these days? Yesterday was Mozart Day (his birthday), Day of Remembrance for Victims of Nazism, Auschwitz Liberation Day, ...take a deep breath... United Nations International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, whew that's a cumbersome title. No need to give a speech after you have read that one to the audience, the title says it all. Oh, and yesterday was Thomas Crapper day. Alas, it seems that the myth about Mr. Crapper is not true. The invention of the flush toilet belongs to someone else. However, British soldiers in World War I did apparently coin the term that is associated with his name.
What good news can we bring out of this hodge-podge of days? Well, your ISP's advertising programs will certainly have a grand old time with this e-mail. You may not have fun at work, but I'm having fun with the devotional today and that is a part of my work. The cats are doing their usual sleeping thing, and I need to refill my coffee mug; that sounds like fun! I see some good news in the economy today, and any good news about the economy is fun these days. The weekend will start as soon as you can get away from your work tonight. That sounds like fun. We do seem to struggle to manufacture reasons for fun in this life.
The reasons and events for fun also end way too soon. Fun quickly exhausts us and we have to set aside another day (more as you get older) to recover from a day of fun. Seems kind of unfair, but imagine if the fall in Eden had eliminated fun entirely. Sounds like an idea for a children's book: The Day the Fun Went Away. Some people might read the Gospels and wonder if that didn't happen when Jesus began his ministry. The black and white (or red) printing and serious tone of the Bible tend to lead us to the conclusion that Jesus was not only a man of sorrows, but that he never had any fun. Jesus ministered for more than 3 years. While we know his mission from the Father was serious, we don't have all of his words and actions recorded for us to check for any fun he might have enjoyed with his disciples or his other close friends. I think we would be wrong to conclude that Jesus never had any fun while he lived way back in the day.
Sometimes we try to project our pain onto Jesus or other people from the past. If I feel downtrodden and depressed now, the disciples must have felt the same way with all the suffering they saw. If we aren't having fun in church, then surely the Puritans had no fun in church. They had to listen to sermons like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God; how could they possibly have any fun? Perhaps that particular sermon by Jonathan Edwards wasn't all jokes and fun. On the other hand, after hearing about the dread and woe of Hell, you could say: "Praise God that I am forgiven in Christ!" Now that's fun!
Have some fun at work today... just to see how your boss likes it.
Bucky
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