Being Entertained – Part 2 — Morning Devotions

By Chris WittsThursday 14 Oct 2021Morning Devotions with Chris WittsDevotionsReading Time: 3 minutes

In Part 1, I opened up the topic of being entertained. I said there’s nothing wrong with entertainment, having a diversion, having time to pursue the things we want to.

• Read Being Entertained – Part 1

As a psychiatrist said, the trouble is that we build “castles in the air” and try to live in them. So, what do we do when we sometimes find that entertainment is shallow and we get bored?

One doctor said that whenever a patient comes to him complaining of vague symptoms with no medical cause, he tells them to crawl out of yourself. It means to crawl out of the cave of self-pity and get involved in the world of hurting people.

Be willing to serve

There was a TV special one time on the life of Prince Charles. The documentary noted that Charles was devastated by the death of his great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten, who was murdered by the Irish Republican Army back in 1979. Lord Mountbatten had been a father figure to Charles. After the death of his mentor, Charles consoled himself by recalling the advice his great-uncle had given him: “Banish your sorrow through service to others,” he told young Charles. That is very wise counsel.

Famed psychiatrist Karl Menninger was once asked, What should you do if you feel a nervous breakdown coming on? Everyone expected him to say, See a psychiatrist, but he replied, “Lock the door of your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need and do something to help that person.”

There’s an old quotation that goes back over 200 years you’ve probably heard before:

I expect to pass through the world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Develop a thankful heart

Let’s consider having an attitude of thankfulness—even cultivating a thankful heart in all the circumstances of life. Colossians 3:17 (NIV) says, “…giving thanks to God the Father through him [Jesus].” There is so much in life to be thankful for. Why do we not see we are so blessed in our lifestyle, with so much that God has given us?

If you have:

• an education and know how to read, then you are more blessed that over two billion people in the world that cannot read anything at all.
• woken up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million around the world who won’t survive the week.
• food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world.
• money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change lying in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy.

And if you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death, you are more blessed than almost three billion people in the world.

We need to contemplate the deeper issues of life and hear what God is saying to us through his Holy Spirit. It was C.S. Lewis  who once wrote, “If I find in myself a desire that this world can’t fulfil, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

How true that is! It’s the part of us that we often can’t describe or explain—the eternal path, that something inside that says, I need to find out what life is all about, to understand whether I have a future. So if we were made for eternity—God’s Word says that—it makes sense that we should live our lives now in light of eternity.

Don’t just live to be entertained. Find out what God wants for your life, and give over the control of your life to Him and He will guide you each day.