Day 8 — Bored

“Nothing is better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy his work. I have also seen that this is from the hand of God. For apart from Him, who can eat and who can find enjoyment?”

— Ecclesiastes 2:24–25 (BSB)

The same bus. The same lessons. The same chores, the same food, the same arguments about the same things. You scroll for an hour and can’t remember a single thing you saw. Everyone else’s life looks exciting online, and yours feels like a loop. Is this it? Is life just doing the same things over and over until you die?

If you’ve ever felt that, you’re in good company. A whole book of the Bible feels it too.

Ecclesiastes is written by “the Teacher,” a man who had everything: money, power, knowledge, pleasure, projects, entertainment. He tried all of it. And his verdict at the start of the book is famous: “Everything is futile!” “All things are wearisome,” he says; “the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear content with hearing.” He could have written that about an endless feed.

But Ecclesiastes doesn’t end in despair. Over and over, the Teacher comes back to a surprising discovery, and today’s verse is one of them. “Nothing is better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy his work. I have also seen that this is from the hand of God.”

Food. Drink. Work. Not the exciting things, the ordinary ones. They’re empty when you try to squeeze ultimate meaning out of them. But they become good again when you receive them “from the hand of God.” “For apart from Him, who can eat and who can find enjoyment?”

So boredom isn’t always a sign that your life is too small. Sometimes it’s a sign that your heart is trying to get from small things what only God can give. The answer isn’t always more: more excitement, more noise, more stimulation. Often the answer is to receive the ordinary things as gifts.

G. K. Chesterton noticed something about small children. When you swing them round, they shout, “Do it again!” And again. And again. They never tire of it. Grown-ups get bored because, he said, they aren’t strong enough to delight in repetition. But perhaps God is. Perhaps He says to the sun every morning, “Do it again.” Perhaps every sunrise, every daisy, every ordinary day is a gift He never tires of giving.

There’s also a kind of boredom that comes from too much input. If your brain is used to a new video every fifteen seconds, then a lesson, a long book or a quiet prayer will feel unbearable. That’s not because they’re worthless. It’s because your attention has been trained by something else. The good news is that attention can be retrained, a little at a time.

And don’t despise small things. God asks, “who has despised the day of small things?” Most of what matters in life, like friendships, skills, character and faith, grows slowly, through ordinary days repeated faithfully.

Today might look like every other day. But it’s a gift from the hand of God. Look for Him in it.

Think about it: When you feel bored, what do you usually reach for? Is it filling you up or leaving you emptier?

Try this: Pick one ordinary thing today, such as a meal, a walk or a chore, and do it slowly, without your phone, paying attention. Thank God for three specific things about it.

Go deeper: Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton — in his most famous chapter, Chesterton suggests that the sameness of nature may not be dead machinery at all but a sign of God’s endless delight, like a child who keeps shouting “Do it again”. Start with chapter 5, “The Ethics of Elfland”.

Father, I confess that I often find my life boring, and I look for something to fill the emptiness. Open my eyes to see ordinary things as gifts from Your hand: my food, my work, my family, this day. When I’m restless, teach me to find my joy in You. Help me be faithful in small things. In Jesus’ name, Amen.