My deliverance and glory depend on God.
God is my strong rock.
My refuge is in God.
All you people: Trust in him at all times!
Pour out your hearts before him!
God is our refuge! – Psalm 62:7-8 (CEB)
I wonder if we reflect enough on the difference between effective time, distracted time, and essential time. More and more we value being effective with our time, so that any activity that is not an effective use of our time gets jettisoned. That is important, as so many tasks claim importance. Most of us also have plenty of distracted time. Time watching television, playing games on our phones, or scrolling on social media are ways to distract ourselves. Yet many people conflate distracted time with down time or recovery time. When we do that, we tend to wonder why we feel so burned out. I suggest it is because we have lost track of the art of essential time: time that is not effective in terms of getting many things done nor is it distracted time of mindlessly allowing ourselves to consume media. Rather it is time that allows us to be open to life. It is time of reflection, emotion, or simply not trying to get anything in particular done.
I took a week to focus on writing recently. One of the things I do in a writing week is get a hotel room for two nights. I don’t need anything fancy, just a bed and a decent desk. In may seem like I do that to be effective, holing myself in a room to write constantly. That’s not really how it works out, though. It is rare that I can give the intense focus that writing requires for more than two hours straight. After that I need several hours to mentally recover from that time of intense focus. That’s the time the being in a hotel room is important. If I were at home, I would distract myself with various media or housework. In other words, I would shift into effective or distracted mode. In the hotel room, my choices are limited. I bring some magazines to read but that is it for entertainment. That makes the down time pretty open. I can read a bit, but otherwise there is not much to do. I find that such empty time allows my thoughts to sharpen and my spirit to settle enough that I can be ready for another round of writing intensely. That empty time is essential because it allows our spirits to breathe enough to be open to the important parts of life: self-reflection, sitting with our emotions, and being open to God’s presence.
I think the idea of essential time plays into our devotional lives. If we think of prayer, devotions, worship, and reading the bible as time that we are trying to get something done, it becomes one more thing on our to-do list. These things are not particularly effective in shortening our list of tasks, and so are easily expendable. If we think of them as distractions from life, then we don’t put much effort behind them. It’s easier to look at a screen than sit in prayer, so it’s easy to let go of those practices. We need to think of our devotional life as essential time for stepping aside from our need to be productive so that we can empty ourselves enough to take in the greater meaning and joy to be found in life. Then we can experience God as a refuge that truly revives us and gives us strength to be effective in the times that lie ahead.