F/Killing Time [matt]

I think there is nothing I hate more than admitting how much I have been shaped by the surrounding culture. Not the consumerism, nor the belief in redemptive violence. No, I have somehow been sucked in to the matrix that is American busyness.

For instance: I am at my computer, typing this on Friday, July 20^th at 5:55 pm. The issue with that is, I was supposed to have written this two weeks ago! On top of that, I am taking a group of high school students on a mission trip in exactly 35 minutes. And I just started typing this! Who does that sort of thing?

I wasn’t always like this. I barely graduated from high school because I was more interested in being with friends and sleeping-in than being responsible. In college I was temporarily a recreation major for goodness sakes! Even today I value reading, writing, and time with friends and family. And yet these are often the things that I am too busy to do.

Life, and in particular the American life, fills time. Our time gets filled with small things that take an hour here, a day there, or even the occasional weekend. Days become full of things like “running errands,” followed with some cleaning, then putting up our feet after a long day and watching a movie. We work too many hours, or at least I do. I do a lot, yet how much of it is really meaningful?

Annie Dillard once wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Such a simple statement, and yet it strikes right to the core of me. If you are anything like me, you fill your time with too much garbage and ultimately kill your time off.

During the next six days, I will be taking teens around Bellingham. It is a mission trip, but it is actually much different. They are going to spend hours at local parks. We are going to meet people on the street and, instead of asking them “have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and savior” (I’ll write my thoughts on that question a different day) they will be encouraged to just chat with people and hear their stories. In other words, we’re going to spend our days “wasting time.”

Of course, wasting time is a phrase that belongs to the dominant culture and needs to be flipped on its head. “Wasting time” is a phrase used by the same sort of people who say things like “time is money.” But if “time is life,” than who really wants to spend all of theirs trying to “make it,” “work up the ladder,” or whatever other disgusting term you want to use.

I propose that we (I say “we,” though it may just be me) start wasting more time. We can change our language and call it “milling time” (not to be confused with Miller time). It’s not killing time or filling time. To mill can also mean to refine. This is the time that refines us, the time that is not enslaved to work or obligations or errands or chores. It is the conscious choice to slow down, to leave the race because it leads to a dead end. It is a choice to live a life that is worth living. The Bible calls it Sabbath. And that sounds like a better use of my time. I’m in.