IDLENESS

   Many years ago, I was in a store in the early morning hour, just before daylight, when the manager of the store arrived to begin her day as well as to relieve the night worker.  She asked him why the groceries were not put on the shelves, as he should have done, and he said he had been too busy.  Then she checked the register tape to look at the night's sales and the truth was revealed.  She said to the employee,
      "Wow! If the devil has a workshop, you must have a factory!"

   One of the most dangerous times for people is when we enter the idleness zone, which is the boredom room of our minds:  when there is nothing important to think about and nothing important to do.  When this happens, we can be sure that the devil, that ol' serpent, will come along and whisper something to think about, something to do, and something to excite the senses:

      "It looks like all of your friends are out having fun tonight and here you are, alone in your room and bored to death.  That's not fair, is it?"

   Some people make  things happen while some people wait  for things to happen.  Those that wait for things to happen are followers--- they follow others as they also become copycats of others in trying to be like them, to be cool, or to be part of the group thing. 

  Followers do not think for themselves, do not make their own decisions, for they lack the initiative to make things happen.  So they buy clothes that fit the uniform of the day, go where others go, and do as others do. 
  When people become followers, they lose themselves  because they have surrendered their own identity for the identity of others.  In so doing, they think as others think, dress as others dress, and walk and talk as others walk and talk as the ways of others become their ways, thereby producing a false self-image of  themselves out of their own imaginations.  Instead of being the person God wants them to be, they engraft the personalities of others into themselves as they strive to live a life that is not normal for them.  They have deceived themselves with their own imaginations, out of which they deceive others with a fake identity.

  When alone, moreover, they become helpless; for they have never learned to stand alone since they have always relied on others to lead them along their path of life; and now, when alone and with nothing important to think about and with nothing important to do, they become bored, and, with boredom, comes idleness.
   Idle minds produce idle hands, and idle hands, mixed with imagination, produce works of evil instead of works of good---all for the sake of another thrill to escape the boredom zone.  But when tomorrow comes, however, they must do it again, and again, and again, as they are lost in a perpetual world of repetition.
   If you are in that time of idleness today, please remember:  your friends are just using you for their own benefit; and when they are finished, they will throw you off the bus and leave you on the side of the road while they travel on down that long and lonesome highway that leads to Nowhere Land.
   Give Christ  a chance!---"And I will restore the years that the locust hath eaten..."  (Joel 2: 25)
   "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."  (2nd Corinthians 6: 17-18)