I cringed as I heard this statement, walking down the hill from class the other day. Immediately my mind felt outrage mixed with sadness. Outrage at the flippancy of it. Sadness at the truth of it.
In some respects, I understand the feeling. 'Senioritis', as we often call it sets in and plants itself. And its stubborn and hard to uproot. There are numerous moments when motivation was scarce and when I honestly felt as though I didn't care a whole lot. I get it.
But I also know that while we do not always have control of our immediate emotions, we do have control over our response to them. Sometimes we want to want something. But we don't actually want it. That is a tough place to be. And I have learned that in those moments, we have a choice. We can choose to allow those emotions and the apathy to rule our lives or we can choose a different path. We can choose to 'boss around our emotions' at times and persevere in the midst of feelings of apathy.
Apathy is a powerful motivator... to do nothing. And often times it wins in the battle of our will. Often times, we give in to apathy and choose to do the easy thing. The un-risky thing. We choose to take the path of least resistance and an overall attitude of not caring sets in. That scares me. It scares me because I know how easy apathy is. The feeling of apathy is not one that we can always 'will away' but we can and do choose what we will do in the midst of apathy. I also know that the Lord does not allow us to remain in apathy. We are called to more. Much more.
Paul reminds the church at Rome to not be slothful in zeal but fervent in spirit in chapter 12, verse 11. This has been a struggle since the dawn of time. Apathy is easy. Taking action is hard. But, often times the hard things are the most worthwhile. Life-giving. God honoring. And they matter. They matter a lot.
So I guess my challenge to myself (and to you) is to choose to do what is right even when my feelings don't line up. To choose fervency instead of apathy. To choose the 'road less traveled' instead of the path of least resistance.
Because our choices matter.
