Enduring Monotony

“Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring.” – 2 Thessalonians 1:4

The kids have an amazing capacity for dealing with monotony. They genuinely don’t seem to mind being at home every day, all day. They play “orphans” (who are in the wild having to build tents and scavenge), “restaurant” (menus, play food, waiters), “family” (everyone wants to play the baby), “the capture game” (they put each other in jail), “animals in the zoo” (we pay to see them and have to feed them), “pick your favorite” (they flip to a random page in the picture encyclopedia and choose their favorite animal or thing on it), “soldiers in the trench” (they hide between the couch and wall), “fighting invisible bad guys,” and on and on.

In a way, what they have done is marvelous: they’ve taken the same few resources and let their imagination thrive within the limits they have. As adults, we seem to have a harder time of it. I’ve burned through various covid-hobbies, but in the end I keep coming back to this fatiguing, indefinable sense of monotony, the unavoidable specter of days stretching on interminably, all minor variations of the same thing. 

Handling monotony requires a different skill set than those most of us are used to. It requires the ability, not to necessarily achieve immediate gratification or visible progress, but to simply endure. Monotony, if faced without distraction, forces us to ask ourselves, what is the point of life? What is my hope, what keeps me going, where does my joy really come from? Are my answers to those questions rote and cerebral, or are they truly what I believe and sometimes experience? Enduring monotony requires an even greater sense of purpose, an even more intentional centering in Christ, an even greater attention to what that monotony unearths in me, than I might otherwise have. Centering myself in the real hope and joy I have in Jesus takes more discipline and creativity than before. 

But Paul here talks not only about enduring, but thriving, the kind of thriving that comes when you endure. He says, we brag about your endurance, because “your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing.” When I look back on this time, will I say that my faith grew? That my love for others increased? Paul is able to look through the suffering and affliction to see people thriving in the ways that really matter. May we do the same.