are we using our time wisely?
our daily choices lay the foundation for our spiritual lives
I’m writing this post on a Friday.
This fact is relevant because I’ve already encountered a handful of people talking excitedly about how the weekend is almost here.
For-profit culture has us wishing away our lives just to escape the “work week.”
How many of us toil at unfulfilling jobs, pining for “free time,” only to discover that we’re heavily conditioned to mostly use that time to engage in counterproductive worldly ventures because, hey, we’ve got “nothing better to do”?
Such a mindset is truly evil.
And it points us toward both the profane and the mundane:
“That’s life,” and “You can’t win ‘em all,” and “Hey, it could always be worse” — we endlessly aim for a little less pain instead of demanding more pleasure. “It’s always been like this,” I’m told, ad nauseam. “You can’t fight City Hall” and “Besides, it’s never gonna change.”
After a while, if you’re not vigilant, it all starts to take root and far too many of us willingly embrace mediocrity — even boredom. Our humanity and our capacity for critical thought are relentlessly pounded out of us.
Yet, we not only willingly accept this “way of life,” but we will also defend it with our very lives.
With all this in mind, please allow me to introduce an important graphic:
Good news: There are easy yet powerful choices we could be making.
What if, instead of mindless doom scrolling (or any kind of scrolling), you dedicated 14 minutes to reading Paul’s letter to the Philippians?
Say no to porn, video games, and social media for a half-hour, and use that 31 minutes to read the Book of Esther.
Skip that violent, deviant cable TV show or “true crime” podcast, and instead choose the Book of Daniel during that hour.
If you have two hours for yet another banal and depraved Netflix movie, you have the time to dive into John’s Gospel.
People frequently swear they’d read the Bible if only they had the time, and yes, some folks are overwhelmed with life right now. However, most of us are actively choosing to squander our precious days as a) receptacles for diabolical, brain-numbing content or b) purveyors of malicious words and ideas.
When you resist sending that gossipy text, you have the four minutes you need to read or re-read the Book of Jude. For that matter, you could allocate those four minutes to send an encouraging text to someone who needs it.
The choice is yours.
Cancel your streaming services and discover how much time and focus you suddenly have to help others, to volunteer, and to do some much-needed work on yourself.
I could go on, but surely you get my drift. We are gifted with the decades, years, days, hours, and minutes that make up our lives.
Are we making the most of this divine opportunity, or are we taking the easy way out by indulging the flesh and/or settling for the ordinary?
Yes, the days are evil, as Paul wrote, but that doesn’t mean we can’t exercise our free will to listen to that still, small voice by doing the right thing for ourselves and those in our lives.
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I'm printing the Bible reading times so I can keep it in front of me