In one of my favorite sitcoms, Seinfeld, George Castanza's father is repeatedly irritated with one thing or another. When this happened he would lift his arms up as he looked skyward and scream "Serenity Now". It always made me chuckle.
This all came up in my memory yesterday when my daughter attended my church and we were in the adult Bible Study class. We are just beginning a new study of the book of Proverbs, one of my favorite parts of the Bible. Our teacher, our pastor, was leading us into the study for the second lesson by reviewing the lesson for last week. This is a very good teaching technique, to set the scene for the day, by reviewing the last lesson.
The August 28th lesson was With Wisdom Comes Character, with Proverbs 1:5 and James 3:13.
After a review we began the September 4th lesson: Proverbs 17:22 and Colossians 3:23, Enthusiasm Builds Character. There was a lot of discussion about what Character was, etc. Then we began to explore how enthusiasm connected with character. The members who are still wage earners had something to say about how hard they had worked in their jobs and how no one seemed to realize the effort they had put in nor had they been recognized for all of the effort and cheerful "enthusiasm" they had put into their work. They expressed that, though they had not asked for that pat on the back, to be ignored completely by their bosses was a real balloon bursting experience. It just took away their enthusiasm for their work, and how do we combat it in the future. There is not a simple solution.
I just sat and listened to this discussion, but in the back of my mind I could see George Castanza's father with his red face lifted upward and his arms shaking in the air shouting "Serenity NOW !
We did not get to finish the discussion as we were running out of the time allotted for this class. The next week we will no doubt take it up again for a reasonable conclusion. I am thinking however, that during this week when these same people meet this same situation at their jobs, they may look at it in a different way. If nothing else, they may remember that not being appreciated is not a singular experience and that may give them some comfort. Or perhaps it can help them to just dismiss it and go on without allowing someone else to rule their own responses.
