Time Well Wasted

There’s a country song I like (among the many I like) called “Time Well Wasted.” In the song, the artist sings about choices he has made that at first seemed to be a waste of time, but later turned out to be among the sweetest moments in his life: time “well wasted.” Instead of making a few extra dollars working overtime, he spends his day off fishing with his dad. Instead of washing his truck, he spends the day rediscovering the beauty of his marriage with his wife, just hanging out together. These things that on the surface look like a “wasted day” or a waste of time to the world (after all, he wasn’t producing any products or making any cash) turned out to be moments he would never forget.

Our lives are full of these kinds of choices, aren’t they? It seems we are constantly at war with differing definitions of happiness and success and other “important” terms in our culture. We are presented with one definition by the culture and quite another definition by God. How haunting is that biblical reminder from the mouth of God that says, “My ways are not your ways....”

Pulitzer prize-winning author Annie Dillard once reminded us that how we spend each moment is how we spend our lives. What choices are we making with our time, with our energy, and with our resources? In our culture, these are actually considered “private” or personal questions. After all, we are told, our time is our own once we’re “off the clock,” and our money – what we make and what do with it – is a “private matter.” And as far as our energies, we are taught that what we do in our privacy is our business and no one else’s, as long as we don’t harm anyone.

The Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Jesus introduces a perspective on these kinds of questions that is very different, however! Jesus, through Scripture and through those Jesus places in our lives (the Church), emphasizes that these matters are not simply private. Rather, they are part of how we learn to live and function as the Community that God is creating us to be. Jesus has something to say about how we handle what we give or don’t give. He has something to say about how we invest our time and energies. If our free time is spent in harmful behavior – toward ourselves or to others – or in selfish ambition, then according to Jesus it affects every other area of our lives and makes it impossible to experience the joys of God’s Kingdom. If we cannot and do not love in private, Jesus reminds, then our public displays are nothing more than useless vanity (Paul seems to remind us of this often, too, as in the “love chapter” in I Cor. 13).

The funny thing is that so many of the things we choose to do as Christians seem like a waste of time: we gather to sing, to pray, to hear and read Scripture, to give money in a offering, and to spend time with those in need (both friends AND strangers!). But, for Jesus, these things are “time well wasted,” as the songwriter put it. These are the things that make us alive and prepare us to go out and live in a world that is so contrary to the way God intended.

How are we spending time, money, and energy today? Hopefully a lot of relaxation is involved. Hopefully the things done and said “in private” are the kinds of things we wouldn’t mind being made public. Hopefully we are choosing to invest in others with the love of Christ over any other investment in our lives when all is said and done. Hopefully, we are people who are not “conforming to the ways of this world” (as Romans 12 reminds), but are instead “being transformed by the renewal” of our minds.

-- Charles W. Christian (Revised and reprinted from the July 2010 Grace Encounters Newsletter)