Why "bored" is okay

I have often told children (my own and my school kids) and just about anyone I can find, that being bored is not a bad thing. In fact I often say it is good for you because it makes you think. Often I try to avoid being bored by some form of escape. It could be playing Tiger Woods golf on the computer (I am again the #1 rated player in the world and still in my first year on the tour!). More often than not it is books that offer escape. I favor adventures like Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum. I love John Grisham. I can get into fantasies by Steven Lawhead or Orson Scott Card or Isaac Assimov. I hide in Tolkien on almost an annual basis. Since I teach language arts at the middle school level I also read young adult books. Sometimes I read blogs of interest, but my selection is rather limited--a few friends who write very sporadically, a couple of "thinkers" who I find very refreshing and helpful, and of course the weather blog. Recently I have started to feel my reading is more time filling than soul filling. It gives me someting to do but I wonder what I am doing. It has raised an awareness of something deeper than I can yet articulate. It feels melancholy or maybe minor-key-ish. It may be that deep longing that C. S. Lewis identifies as home. I am sure it has to do with God. I am afraid to walk to far towards the deep, yet drawn by a sense that there is no other way to live. I would be much diminished if I did not know this haunting, I would, in fact, be hopeless. My hope rest on what He has done, and a trust that the pathway is His. Nevertheless, it is sometimes dark for I get in my own way and fall back to offering my Lord my own advice. Being bored is good, for it brings me closer to my senses. He is my all in all. In Him I am satisfied. He is the author and perfector of my faith. I can trust Him. Being bored cuts through the diversions I use to hide from the One who loves me most. What could be better than that?