A Stray Thought

During a walk this week I was thinking about how I have been feeling about things and the notion of weariness came into view. As I thought about it, a sense of weariness makes sense. Life for me is dealing with my sin, trying to help others deal with their sin, dealing with desires that are good and right but unmet, and longing for the age to come when all of this 'dealing with …' will be over.

This is when a verse that I have known and used more than a few times came to mind.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. Galatians 6.9

And with the verse came this thought: Am I sinning by being weary? And I 'growing weary of doing good'? I decided to take a closer look at the verse, especially what the Greek word translated 'weary' was all about. I came up with this. The basic idea of that Greek word is 'to be discouraged'. It shows up only 5 times in the New Testament. Here's one of those times in the ESV.

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. Luke 18:1

Our word is here translated 'lose heart'. And it is translated that way (in the ESV) three of the five times it shows up.

I found this heartening. Paul's point is not that we should never feel tired of the effort it takes to live faithfully in this fallen world. His point is that we should never give up. I rather think that feeling a measure of weariness is an indicator that we are actually doing something right. Living faithfully now is hard. It should tire us out. But we should never quit. After all, 'in due season we will reap'.