Wasting Time
I believe in wasting time. Wasting time in my personal life. And wasting time in ministry.
When I look back at the best moments of my life, they were ones that didn’t accomplish anything. Sitting around a table, telling stories, laughter. Definitely laughter.
When I look back at the best and most fruitful times in ministry, I also fully believe that those are the ones that would be considered wasted time. Like when my high school girls’ small group in Nashville would eat dinner together, usually resulting in stories, jokes, and laughter. Or sitting outside of someone’s house in Haiti, playing with kids, letting them tell us about their lives. Or playing a card game with teenagers on our porch in Haiti, before I could speak much of the language. Or jumping rope with the kids and our neighbors in Asia.
What is the point? Relationship.
Sometimes when I was a teacher monitoring the playground, kids would come and tell me little pieces of their story. How she stayed up all night with her family, moving out of her house and into a hotel. As a teacher, some would consider standing on the playground to be wasted time. For me, it was where things started to make sense.
When I worked in the dormitory of a high school boarding school, some of my favorite moments were when the girls would come talk to me about their lives. I could encourage them, challenge them, pray with them, tell them about my own life. For some, these conversations would be wasted time, because you’re not DOING anything.
It’s the wasted time that matters. The “I could be doing something else, but instead I’m choosing to be here, present with you” time. Something unfolds there, something we can’t quite get to in the planned out, measured, other parts of life.
I remember when I was a teenager, there were at least a couple of times that my youth minister sat with me when I was struggling even though I couldn’t figure out how to talk about it. We just sat outside of the youth room, him waiting for me to talk. And sometimes I did, and sometimes I didn’t. But it mattered to me that he sat there, when he probably had a million other things he could have been doing. He wasted his time on me.
This is the kind of life I want to live, as a missionary, and simply as a human. A life of wasting time. Not for nothing, but for the person in front of me.
I believe that this is what it takes to live a life of fruitfulness. I’ve tried to get to it through planning, through schedules, through meetings, through programs. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work unless I am wasting time.
So let’s look for those moments, those time-wasting, unproductive, “I should be doing something else” kind of moments. Let’s live there. Let’s look there for the glory. I have a feeling that’s where it is hiding.
When I look back at the best moments of my life, they were ones that didn’t accomplish anything. Sitting around a table, telling stories, laughter. Definitely laughter.
When I look back at the best and most fruitful times in ministry, I also fully believe that those are the ones that would be considered wasted time. Like when my high school girls’ small group in Nashville would eat dinner together, usually resulting in stories, jokes, and laughter. Or sitting outside of someone’s house in Haiti, playing with kids, letting them tell us about their lives. Or playing a card game with teenagers on our porch in Haiti, before I could speak much of the language. Or jumping rope with the kids and our neighbors in Asia.What is the point? Relationship.
Sometimes when I was a teacher monitoring the playground, kids would come and tell me little pieces of their story. How she stayed up all night with her family, moving out of her house and into a hotel. As a teacher, some would consider standing on the playground to be wasted time. For me, it was where things started to make sense.
When I worked in the dormitory of a high school boarding school, some of my favorite moments were when the girls would come talk to me about their lives. I could encourage them, challenge them, pray with them, tell them about my own life. For some, these conversations would be wasted time, because you’re not DOING anything.
It’s the wasted time that matters. The “I could be doing something else, but instead I’m choosing to be here, present with you” time. Something unfolds there, something we can’t quite get to in the planned out, measured, other parts of life.
I remember when I was a teenager, there were at least a couple of times that my youth minister sat with me when I was struggling even though I couldn’t figure out how to talk about it. We just sat outside of the youth room, him waiting for me to talk. And sometimes I did, and sometimes I didn’t. But it mattered to me that he sat there, when he probably had a million other things he could have been doing. He wasted his time on me.
This is the kind of life I want to live, as a missionary, and simply as a human. A life of wasting time. Not for nothing, but for the person in front of me.
I believe that this is what it takes to live a life of fruitfulness. I’ve tried to get to it through planning, through schedules, through meetings, through programs. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work unless I am wasting time.
So let’s look for those moments, those time-wasting, unproductive, “I should be doing something else” kind of moments. Let’s live there. Let’s look there for the glory. I have a feeling that’s where it is hiding.
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