It's About Time

RELIGION COLUMN

By Randall Friesen
FOR THE HERALD

My wife, Lauralea, and I were talking the other day about who we connect with, on a regular basis. We were looking back at who we had, or rather how we had connected with others lately. She made an interesting observation: the real connecting we had done over the past month were with people who had time to connect.

They had, or at least appeared to have had time just to sit a while. We didn't have to plan the get together days in advance. They didn't seem to be thinking where else they needed to be, as they sat across from us visiting. Their only agenda  was hanging out, checking up, sharing themselves and their time with the likes of us.

We got to thinking just how much our world has changed, from a time when people were a priority, to today when busy schedules are more important.

It seems most of us would rather have a full day ahead of us, with a list of things to do and people to network with. Somehow it makes us look important, valuable, significant.

We create these busy illusions of importance for ourselves because un-busyness would be a sign of ...unimportance? laziness? friendlessness?

Or, maybe the busyness keeps us from thinking things too deeply or feeling emotions too significantly. Maybe it's like human autopilot or something. Maybe it keeps the wheels moving so we don't have to.

I don't know.

But I do know that we are busy people.

Sally Morganthaler, an American writer and speaker, has said:

   "Truly, our de-prioritization of our own offspring is one of the great tragedies of late twentieth century America. The effects are staggering, and I'm not just talking about broken homes. It goes much deeper than that. The cessation of inter-generational narrative is at the core. The exchange of story has been one of the most important roles of family life. But getting involved in that exchange means sacrificing time, listening, and value that our children are actually worth the effort."

It's one thing to not have time for our friends or neighbours, but this is starting to seep into our homes. We hardly even have time for the kids anymore. Time to listen to our children's stories. Time to tell them ours.

We are busy people, and we like it that way, even though  we say we don't.

To choose another way may cost us. It may cost us income, perceived significance, being labelled lazy, or worse yet, uneducated.

But maybe this is an area in which we need to be counter cultural. Maybe we need to be an example to our neighbours and friends and children. Perhaps we need to communicate with our choices, that busyness isn't inherently a good thing. That the luxury of time is more precious than the luxury of wealth. That spending time with someone is a huge, wonderful extravagance of love.

It's interesting that the reward promised to followers of Christ after their death isn't a boatload of gold. In fact, in God's economy, gold is used for making roads. Instead, what is promised is something called Eternal Life. A great, never-ending span  ...of time.

Time will be the reward. Not because we've been so short of it down here, but because of its incredible value. If we will just realize it.

Time.

What are you doing with yours?

---

Randall Friesen is a local husband and father who pastors Gateway
Covenant Church. He writes regularly at randallfriesen.com