“Enchantment” is an interesting word, and so is its opposite: disenchantment. We like enchantment: we like movies that are enchanting, your high school prom may have had as its theme “Some Enchanted Evening,” and we like the idea of walking through an enchanted forest.

On the other hand, being disenchanted is a negative experience. We don't like being disenchanted, though we often are. Being disenchanted with something means that we no longer like it; we're weary, exhausted, dulled, calloused, or jaded by it.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about being enchanted or disenchanted with life. The more I reflect on it and study it, the more I'm convinced that those of us who seek to follow Jesus need to address the subject of whether we’re enchanted or disenchanted with the life the Lord has given us. I dealt with this subject personally in a major way last October. Let me share what the Lord taught me about being enchanted or disenchanted with life.

MY HOCKING HILLS EXPERIENCE
As part of my weeklong study leave last year I spent some time alone in Hocking Hills State Park. I rented one of their little camper cabins, read a lot, took many walks, prayed, and took pictures.

At the bookstore before I left, I couldn't seem to find the right books to take with me on my camping retreat. That was important to me; I'd be spending many hours with those books, so I wanted them to be the right ones. Finally I grabbed a book off the bookshelf at home that I had purchased seven or so years earlier but had never read. It was The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, by Thomas Moore. (My referring to this book shouldn’t be construed as a wholehearted endorsement of it, because there are parts of it that I disagree with. Actually, I still haven’t finished it. Nevertheless, God used the 100 or so pages that I did read to speak to me in a major way.)

I alternated between reading that book and a couple of others, taking an hour-long prayer walk, and reading again. The weather was unseasonably warm; the sun could barely sift its way through the dense woods. As I walked up and down the trail and over small creeks, I realized how enchanted a forest it was. It felt enchanted, sort of like when you see a beautiful forest scene in a movie with the moss on the ground, trickles of water in small streams, and light streaming through the high tree branches.

I went back to my cabin, and sitting in my lawn chair I read some more of The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life. An insight coalesced in my mind in an instant: I was experiencing significant disenchantment with my ministry, and that disenchantment was a sin!

I suspect that the seemingly long road we've been traveling as a church toward relocating and building had discouraged me; it seemed that in some ways we were stymied. My writing ministry seemed to be going nowhere fast, too. Then it occurred to me that down deep I still believed that we were — and that I was — essentially in God's will. My disenchantment a sin because I was disenchanted with things even though I thought we were essentially where God wanted us and I was essentially where God wanted me.

I confessed my disenchantment and made a commitment to the Lord that with His help, I wouldn’t allow myself to become that disenchanted again. I'm still committed to that promise.

DISENCHANTMENT WITH LIFE
I’ve shared my experience because I hope to help all of us take an honest look at ourselves and see that we’re often disenchanted when we shouldn't be. Don't misunderstand; there are times when we’re supposed to be disenchanted with the way things are. That’s what motivates us to change things. What I'm talking about, however, is an ongoing, pervasive sense of discontent with the lives that God has given us.

Thomas Moore wrote, “During my years of practice as a psychotherapist, I felt that the people bringing me their stories of a foundering career, a failing marriage, a tenacious depression, or an overpowering addiction were suffering from a deep malaise. They had fallen out of love with life itself, which, in their adult years, had become an absorbing collection of problems.” (The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, p. xvii)

When we were very young, we were enchanted by many different things. Remember? There was a favorite tree we sat under or climbed, the curious sound of rain, the fun of eating strawberries, the delight of a fresh snowfall. A fresh snowfall excited us as children; now we look outside and the first thing we think is that we're going to have to shovel it or drive through it.

Have you ever noticed that a child often resists taking a nap or going to bed? That’s because children don't want to miss out on life. We adults, on the other hand, look forward to sleep so we can stop thinking about life’s problems for a while. We’ve grown up too much, and in the process we lost our childlike delight with life. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mathew 18:3) When we grow up we become concerned about achieving and accomplishing things and about being self-supporting and self-confident. Little children need other people, they're curious to learn, and they’re delighted by what's around them. It's difficult to know exactly what Jesus had in mind when He said that we should become like little children, but the obvious application is that we should see ourselves as little children before the Heavenly Father. Should we, as His children, be disenchanted with life with Him? I don't think so.

How do we as parents feel when we think we're doing a pretty good job of spending time with our kids and they roll their eyes and say, “This is boooooring!” or “You're no fun.” Aren't we, in essence, doing the same thing to our Heavenly Father when we allow ourselves to spend long periods of time disenchanted with the life He's given us?

THE ENCHANTED PSALMIST
That’s enough negativity about disenchantment. As newscaster Paul Harvey often says, wash your ears out with this! Listen to what the psalmist declared in Psalm 147: “Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him!” (v.1) Later he stated, “Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make music to our God on the harp.” (v.7) He also wrote, “Extol the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion.” (v.12) The psalmist ended where he began, declaring, “Praise the Lord.” (v.20)

It's obvious that the psalmist was enchanted with God, and he listed several reasons why. God had been good to Jerusalem (v.2). He heals those with broken hearts (v.3). He put every single star in the universe and has named each one (v.4). (By the way, we can be even more impressed when it comes to the stars than the psalmist was. Undoubtedly some of what the psalmist thought were stars when he gazed up at the sky were actually galaxies containing billions of stars. We now know that there are billions of galaxies, with billions of stars in each one!).

The psalmist described the moisture cycle with its clouds and rain, and how the cycle nourishes the earth to be life-producing (vs.8-9) Later he described winter weather, including snow and frost, hail, and the icy blasts of sleet, and how it eventually all melts — which isn’t unusual for us, but it was unusual to the psalmist in the Middle East (vs.15-18).

The psalmist's description of nature reminds me of a PBS nature special. His is an almost scientific description of what happens in the world — but unlike PBS, he gave the glory to God!

The psalmist reminded us that God has revealed Himself in actual words that are found in the Holy Scriptures. Just think — we have at our fingertips the very Word of God!

In the very middle of the psalm we’re told our greatest reason to delight in God, and in life itself. The psalmist wrote about what delights God — and that turns out to be you and me! He delights in us when we’re willing, like Jesus said, to be little children utterly dependent on God, staying close to Him: “His pleasure is not in the strength of the horse [the greatness of His creation], nor his delight in the legs of man [the achievements of people]; the Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.” (vs.10-11) We should be enchanted with life because out of all creation, God is enchanted with us most of all! He seeks to delight in us!

START WITH ENCHANTMENT WITH GOD
The Old Testament character Jacob was on a trip when he stopped for the night in the middle of nowhere. He had a dream about a stairway to heaven, with angels going up and down it between heaven and earth. When he awoke he declared, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” (Genesis 28:16) The Lord is in every place! There’s no place He is not, including in your life! I suspect that we could echo the words of Jacob: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” Brother Lawrence, a classic spiritual teacher, is famous for his basic message: the practice of the presence of God. He wrote, “If I were a preacher, I would preach more than anything else the practice of the presence of God . . .”

Another psalmist, who must have been a king or a military commander, described how God helped him through a battle. Then he declared, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24) Is there any day when we shouldn’t be rejoicing in the Lord? Every day we should be able to affirm, “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Life is far from perfect; some days are filled with tragedy. However, even on the very worst of days we have the Lord — and if we practice His presence, remembering that He’s with us, there's at least one reason we can rejoice: the Lord is with us! Going back to the example of children, if you hand them lemons, what do they do with them? They make lemonade, set up a lemonade stand, and sell the lemonade, making some money. If life hands you a lemon . . . .

RE-ENCHANTMENT IS A CHOICE
Being enchanted with life isn’t primarily determined by circumstances. Certainly it's easier to appreciate snow when you're sliding down a hill on a sled than when your car's stuck in the stuff, but circumstances need have only limited impact on whether we find things that enchant us.

Diann and I have the unique opportunity to experience life in what could be called a poverty area in the world and also in an area of the world brimming with wealth, by the world's standards. Within a few weeks we can spend time with our daughter Julie and her family in Mexico and with our son Dan and his wife Teri and their son in a suburb of Indianapolis. Julie's neighbors live in adobe houses with no refrigerators, cars, or swing sets in their back yards. Dan's neighbors drive expensive cars, have extra refrigerators in their garages, and own big swing sets. We've seen children in both locations, and they seem equally happy. Julie counsels neighbor women in the hills of rural Mexico; they have some major problems. Teri, our daughter-in-law, has a thriving counseling business where she helps middle- to upper-class people deal with the misery in their lives.

Being satisfied with life and finding enchantment in it doesn't have as much to do with circumstances as one would expect. Being enchanted with day-to-day life is very much a choice. That’s good to remember when life doesn’t seem very enchanting!

We give in too easily and walk away from problems, whether the problem is a job, a house, a marriage, or whatever. We settle too easily for monotony, blaming someone else when we don’t get more out of something — when perhaps we need to be putting more into it!

This holds true for marriages, too. Recently in Annie's Mailbox, the column in the paper that used to be called Ann Landers, there was a letter from a husband of 32 years. He was apparently responding to a letter from a wife who was craving intimacy from her husband. He wrote, “I wish I could tell the husbands of these women what a mistake they're making.” He then described how he had lost interest in his wife romantically and physically because, as he put it, “my wife's body changed quite a bit over the course of our marriage and I responded accordingly.” He went on to write, “Somewhere along the line, I had an awakening. I realized my wife had been loving, faithful, and supportive for our entire marriage. She provided indispensable contributions, which resulted in the successful and happy life we enjoy. Our two adult sons are fine young men, in large part because of their mother. I asked for my wife's forgiveness and promised things would be different, and I've kept my word. To the husbands [and let me add to wives, too!] who are feeling neglected: Whatever your problem is, fix it! Your wife [or husband] deserves better.” The letter was signed, “Thankful I Woke up in Kansas City, Mo.”

Let me add something for all of us husbands and wives who have been married for several years. We’re now married to the person with whom we’ve gone through so much: buying and fixing up houses, raising children, getting through some times of illness. Some of us find ourselves sleeping beside the other grandparent of our grandchildren. There’s an intimacy about that which can be built on and which can cause us to still want to hold hands, take walks together, and more. As we get older in marriage it’s no longer so much the hormones that provide love, closeness, excitement, and even arousal; it’s everything that we’ve invested together in our lives together. By the grace of God it’s possible, and it’s certainly the Lord's will, that we be re-enchanted by the person we're married to!

The same choice to be re-enchanted holds true in any other area of life. Among a group of friends, or even in a church fellowship, we can focus on what annoys us about people and what hurts us — or we can choose to look for what’s good in other people and see the good things that are happening.

No job is perfect; that's why they pay you to show up! If we're looking for a perfect job where the boss hails from Nazareth and is named Jesus, we're going to have to keep looking during our whole working career!

The psalmist reminded us of what’s really good to do: “Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him!” (v.1) God has given us our lives; certainly we can do better than being disenchanted so often! This is our Father's world; there should be much about it that enchants us!

Thomas Moore gave us some closing advice: “The first step in enchantment, then, is to recover a beginner's mind and a child's wonder. . . . “ (p. xx)