As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“God creates leisure and work as a means of human flourishing in the world. Principles about leisure and vocation can be drawn from the biblical themes of sabbath, festival, and food throughout Scripture.” - Christ Over All
“I was lovingly confronted by a dear friend and fellow pastor that I was not using all my vacation time. In his rebuke, he explained to me the reasons I should be taking every day of vacation the church gives me, which I had never done.” - C.Leaders
“We know we weren’t made for this, but we don’t know what to do about it. That’s the genius behind the Sabbath, a word from Hebrew that means “stop” or “cease.” It’s the opposite of doing something.” - TGC
“While we believe that our vocations are a gift from God, we also understand that rest is an essential ingredient to a well-balanced life and something our Creator wants us to enjoy according to his will.” - IFWE
“Oxford University Press’s 2024 word of the year is … ‘brain rot.’ The term is not new. Henry David Thoreau first used it in his 1854 book Walden to refer to the devaluing of complex ideas in favor of simple ones.” - Breakpoint
“Play has helped me not to be defined by my difficulty or my desert. It’s helped me to see life as more than something that is challenging. It’s helped me see that my joy is not dependent on my health and my play is not dependent on whether life is good.” - Common Good
Read Part 1.
If fun is good, but not all fun is good, then we ought to choose our fun thoughtfully and wisely. Fun ought to be to our benefit, not a means of our destruction.
So how do we choose? Can we just choose what we like?
Likes are important. There’s no sense in seeking relaxation in things you don’t like; if this is about pleasure and rest, then that’s obvious.
I’d like to take a few posts to talk seriously about fun.
Seriously. About fun.
A few years back I did some thinking about the topic, thinking that eventuated in a chapel sermon at BJU on March 19, 2008. These days it seems helpful to run those ideas around the block again.
My first thought about fun is the title of this post.
Fun is good.
“A part of recreation is rest. God demonstrates a pattern of rest at the end of the creation account, when he ‘rested from all his work that he had done in creation’ (Gen. 2:3). The God who does not tire stopped and rested.” - IFWE
You might have noticed that I haven’t written a post lately. This has been due, in large part, to the fact that I’m steadily (frantically?) working on a manuscript that’s due in six weeks. Like any good writer, I’ve successfully managed to make my work expand to fit precisely the amount of time I have to do it. It’s a gift really.
Discussion