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Monday, Monday....

It's Monday, again, and in the afterglow of a weekend of wonderful worship and refreshing family fun, we plunge back into the doldrums of daily duties with revived enthusiasm. Then it hits--the feeling of dread, restlessness, irrelevance. However delightful and favorable your workplace may be, you're probably feeling it today--like a kid stomping back to school after a four-day weekend, sullen-faced, heavy-hearted, and distracted. Mom used to call it the "don't want-to's."

Yes, that's it--don't want to be here, don't want to do this---"can't adult today," as my daughter, working her way through college, now says. The expression has come full circle, evolving into Millineal-ese, but the feeling equally familiar to us all.

We all occasionally have a sense of not belonging--or at least, not belonging here, and it has little to do with situational discontent, especially after a break from your usual rolling mountain of duties. The fact is, whenever we come up for air, so to speak, we become aware of who we really are--and it's not defined by what we do for a living. The feeling emerges, through the layers of obligations, purposes, challenges, goals, and everything else we wrap around ourselves to make ourselves relevant to the world around us, and bubbles up like a volcano through so many layers of hardened earth and rock, then bursts out with a great big -- "I don't belong here!"

You're right. We don't. We were made for something more than punching a clock, chauffering kids to practice, running errands, building bridges or spaceships....Whatever you do, it's important, but it's secondary to who you really are--your soul. It was made for worship, and that need to worship goes unsatisfied, grows restless and discontent, without being fulfilled. It's a thirst and a hunger that nothing else can satisfy, except time with the one who made you, who knows you, and who designed your purpose. We will never really "fit in" with the world around us, but, with an empty heart and starved spirit, we can't even fit in with ourselves, if that makes sense....

In God's presence is complete joy. Seek Him early today, find Him, and keep Him in your heart as you go about your Monday madness. Wait for Him---to be with you, to lead you, to calm you, to strengthen you for your purpose today. Let God's purpose for your life be your joy, your purpose, your sense of identity, not the whimsical, shifting opinions of the people around you. You DO belong. You belong to Him.

“Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken. My victory and honor come from God alone...”
Psalms 62:5-7 NLT
http://bible.com/116/psa.62.5-7.nlt
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