Episode 1. Round and Round and Round
Here we are, we’ve literally just stepped over the threshold of the New Year. And the question for many of us is this: Is this year going to continue to be the same as last year which was …
Here we are, we’ve literally just stepped over the threshold of the New Year. And the question for many of us is this: Is this year going to continue to be the same as last year which was pretty much the same as the one before that and even the one before that? Or am I going to make some changes and get some things happening just a little bit better in my life?
You see them less and less these days but one of my favourite things when I was a young boy was riding the merry-go-round. There was just something so special, so magical about these brightly coloured red and yellow contraptions with horses and elephants and sometimes even kangaroo’s on them that went up and down and round and round. And then there was the music to top it all off and the sheer excitement of the prospect of riding a merry-go-round was something that would set me aquiver.
Every now and then my parents acquiesced to my pleas and spent a few pennies to let me have a ride. Wow, that was something incredibly special. And on I’d hop and go round and round and up and down only to come off the ride feeling slightly nauseous as a result of the experience but totally delighted to have been on the ride.
So when the Mary Poppins movie was released when I was just five years old, you can imagine how I felt about the merry-go-round scene when the horses they were riding on the merry-go-round broke away and started heading off over hill and dale. Totally, totally magical to the eyes and the heart of a little boy.
That was over half a century ago and yet I can still remember the feeling of the rapture at experiencing the wonder of the merry-go-round. I wonder how many oldies like me who are tuning in today and you’re totally getting this. It’s bringing back some incredibly fond memories of your childhood.
Well today, we’re kicking off a new series of messages called Why Not Jump Off The Merry-Go-Round because the sad thing is that many people’s lives are a bit like constantly living on a merry-go-round. They’re going up and down and round and round so this perception that something is happening, they’re going forward each day. But when they wake up the next morning they find themselves back in the same place again because they haven’t been going forward at all. They’ve been going round and round and round and round day after day.
And just as a single ride on a merry-go-round can make you feel, well, a little nauseous, imagine how you’d feel if you were stuck on that merry-go-round for several hours because it just wouldn’t stop and you couldn’t get off. It would make you feel positively sick, wouldn’t it? Round and round and round and round, always returning to the same place.
Life was never meant to be a merry-go-round. Like the riders in the Mary Poppins movie we’re meant to break out and ride over new territory and meet new people, win new hearts, experience new things. Might we just take a look at your life at the moment … how much of it is a merry-go-round where you end up back in the same place again each morning? What things in your life would you like to change?
Another way of coming to this whole thing is to say that our lives are stuck in a rut – it’s the same thing over and over again. We can experience this in all different parts of our lives, ‘Oh my marriage is stuck in a rut, my career seems to have stalled, I’m going up and down and round and round but I’m just not moving forward. My Church life is stuck in a rut or I feel like we eat the same food every night. I live in the same place, I go to work in the same place, I do the same things on the weekends with the same people.’ Is this how the rest of my life is going to play itself out?
These are the sorts of things that we think about when we feel entirely helpless to stop the merry-go-round and hop off it and end up heading in a different direction. It seems that someone else or something else is controlling the merry-go-round. We have no control so we just keep on going up and down and round and round.
Have a listen to this. It’s a lament from a great king of Israel after living a life of great wealth and great excitement, the most amazing life, if you will, of power and riches. He was a man of great wisdom and eventually though he came to this conclusion.
‘Meaningless, meaningless,’ he cried, ‘utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless’. What does a man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and to the north, round and round it goes ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from there they return. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing nor the ear it’s fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which anyone can say, ‘Look, there’s something new’? It was here already long before. It was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow. (Ecclesiastes 1: 2-11.
Isn’t that the pessimistic conclusion we can so often come to? It feels as though we’re going round and round and up and down over and over again in the same place. And after about a thousand times of doing this none of it seems to have any meaning – it seems empty, it seems hollow.
There’s not one of us who hasn’t been there and I know that many people are there today. But I want to hit you up with some really good news today, you’re not powerless at all because the God I read about in the Bible is not stuck in a rut – no way! He’s a God of new beginnings.
Have a listen to these Words from God through the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 43: 18 – 22. These Words are to you and me. God says:
Don’t remember the former things or consider the things of old because I’m about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, the wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.
And that’s what we’re going to be talking about over this next couple of weeks on the program because your God has a stunning life plan for you. Make no mistake about it – an absolutely stunning life. Now I know you may be thinking, ‘Well, that stunning life couldn’t possibly be for me, no way. I’m in a rut and that’s it, my life’s on a merry-go-round and nobody is ever going to turn the blessed thing off so I can get off’.
Back in my childhood days I didn’t quite realise it but there was a person, normally a man, in the centre of the merry-go-round. He was the guy who started it up and he was the guy who turned it off so we could hop off and get on with our lives after the thrill of the ride.
And for you and me much depends on who you and I put at the centre of our lives. Let’s face it much of our life is routine, mundane, same after same. I don’t care how glamorous or desirable a person’s lifestyle may be. I don’t care how much money they have, anybody can get that humdrum feeling happening in their lives.
I was on a fourteen-night cruise some years back and it was fantastic. Great food, great service, lovely surroundings, very comfortable cabin but after about seven days we felt like we were getting into a routine, after fourteen days we’d had a great time but we felt like it was time to get off. I couldn’t imagine doing that cruise for three or four or five months as good as it was.
So often we go looking to change our circumstances to make something new happen, to get out of the rut, to hop off the old merry-go-round. And yet, that’s more often than not, not the answer at all because more often than not, it’s what’s happening on the inside that gives us the feeling of monotony or not.
And that’s something I want to spend some more time exploring with you tomorrow.
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