I was talking to someone today who was moaning and groaning about having to shovel his sidewalk. His whining, reminded me of the attitude of most of my fellow doctors during training. They constantly whined and complained about the long hours, the difficulty, the anxiety etc.
I wondered what they gained from all the whining.
Whining is definitely a basic human characteristic. Two million Israelis in the desert managed to fill 40 years with it. So why do we do it:
I do not find that whining gets me out of having to do tasks or out of having to face responsibilities. It does not get other people to give me extra credit. It does not get them to take the responsibility from me. The only thing that it seems to accomplish, is to make my life miserable and to fill me with expectations that God or the world owe me big time. They should reward me for putting up with the miserable responsibilities.
Often we do the responsible behavior because we love the person we are serving or, in God’s case, worshiping. But do we delight in the service? We changed diapers because we love the child and do not want him to get diaper rash and we enjoy the overall process of having a child but do we delight as we clean the stinky diapers? We do chores because we have to, but do we jump out of bed yelling, “Oh boy I get to do chores today!”(If we were sane we would.)
One thing that has helped me, was being the psychiatrist for end-of-life nursing homes. When I found myself tempted to wine and complain about the hours, the labor the paperwork etc. I realized that most of the people I was serving would be more than happy to put in the hours, do the labor and the paperwork if they were capable of it. And that being able to do these things was a privilege.
I have found that learning to delight in repetitive effort, tiring tasks and even smelly diapers causes my life to be an endless daylight. I remind myself that dirty dishes mean fed family members. Maybe when we get to heaven, the main difference will be our attitude. We will still have lots of things to do, but we will just delighting doing them.
I remember going to a church of godly hard-working people. The pastor asked how many men would enjoy working in the garden all day in the hot sun. He used it as an example of how we should discipline ourselves to put up with and endure hardship as a good soldier. I raised my hand enthusiastically but I was the only man in the entire church who raised his hand to assert that spending a day working in the garden sounded like a delight.
What about talking to God, serving God, worshiping God, or just sharing life with him? Can we join with David in the psalms who says, “I was glad when they send to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” Look up all the times that the Bible commands us to delight in his word not just read it.
Most children have to be cajoled into practicing their piano. Not my Cheri, we used the promise of letting her practice to motivate her to get other things done. She still plays for church and delights in it. Watch out, you might find yourself volunteering in the church nursery to change diapers. But, that would be OK because you would be delighting in it.
Dear Lord help me to delighting in all the tasks.
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