Boring Evenings At Home Mean Life Is Good

Life can be a roller coaster of ups and downs. When boring evenings at home are your normal, thank God. Because that means life is good.

It’s time to embrace boring. Because a boring life means your life is peaceful and routine.

No vicious tossing with bad, sad or scary events.

So never wish for an un-boring life.

Because sometimes, boring evenings at home become the most desired thing in the world.

At least, they were for this teenager a long time ago…

“I just wanted boring evenings at home. 

With just my parents, my little brother and myself.”

Have you – in the history of ever – heard a teenager say that? I highly doubt it.

My friend and I went to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak in our town. She told us that when she was seventeen, an evening at home was at the top of her list of wishes.

Because it was something she couldn’t have.

And never would again.

She was in high school in Germany during the Holocaust (of which seventeen-ers today may not have heard about or, even worse, are told never happened).

One morning her father had a really strange request of her.  To this day, she doesn’t know why, because he didn’t usually ask weird things of her.  He loved her too much to embarrass her.  But he also knew that she would do whatever he asked. Because girls listened to their dads in those days.

So he told her, “Wear your hiking boots to school today.”

She was horrified, because no girls ever wore hiking boots to her school.  But she did.

She wore hiking boots to school because her father told her to.

And her hiking boots saved her life.

While she was in school that day, her parents and little brother were taken to a concentration camp.  Then she was captured and taken to Sachsenhausen.

She survived the camp.  And then she survived the “Death March.”  Oh, so many didn’t survive that terrible march!  The hiking boots her father made her wear that fateful day saved her. She managed to hang on to them throughout her ordeal, and now they saved her on the cold, snowy trail.

That, and the ever-present yearning for the lost boring evenings at home with her family.

She thought about those boring evenings when she felt like giving up under the ghastly conditions of the concentration camp.  She didn’t know if she’d ever see her family again, but she hoped to find them after the war, and resume the boring evenings at home she now treasured with all her heart.

But she never got the chance.  Her family was gone. Forever.

Embrace Your Boring Evenings at Home. 

Just the same old, same old.

There’s a story in the Bible about a young man who couldn’t handle boring life with his family. He demanded his inheritance and hit the streets. (Luke 12:11-32)

We know how that turned out. He ran out of money and friends and places to sleep.  It was New York City for a self-destructing country bumpkin.

And then he recalled home and the feasts and the cozy beds.  The boring evenings at home. Why, he’d had all he wanted before he picked his own war!  He went home to his father with a renewed and thankful heart.

Thank you, God, for boring evenings at home.

Thank you for same old, same old.

Because that means life is going good. And we should embrace the mundane, boring sameness. Make plans for quiet moments of prayer and reading The Word. Focus on higher roads and greater goals.

Mundane means no crises, no storms, no devil attacks of the soul. Mundane means no bad choices, money issues fights or career one-upping.

While people define boring in many ways, the boring referred to here is good routine. Routine in a good way, because any other case means crisis. “Boring evenings” are happy, content hearts living grateful for the good God pours out.

So choose the quiet joy, the inner peace, and observe the beauty of each moment of your “boring evenings” at home.