Wasting Time

Conscientiously “wasting” time with God…

Abba’s Child pg 40

I know what this means! It’s nice to write here in the dark no risk of anyone reading over my shoulder, laugh out loud.

I know what this means! It’s nice to write here in the dark no risk of anyone reading over my shoulder, laugh out loud.

Years ago when talking to my brother Andrew, I said something about wanting to waste time with him. One phrase that comes to mind is an angry person saying that was a waste of my time. It’s a sort of put down?

So asking someone to come waste time with me. It wasn’t a put down and my brother didn’t take it that way. 

 I wish I was more educated so I could come up with some short handled literary term for this! But Anne Lamott would chide me for not putting it into my own words anyways.

So just think of some grumpy old person saying well that was a waste of my time, and two teenagers laughing saying yeah let’s go waste each other’s time! Is it sarcasm? 

I don’t know if everyone has it, but I know that I have it. This incessant need built inside of me to always have a purpose for their always to be a purpose for everything an outcome a profit.

I think of a person who is gathering their strength from what all this effort will resulted and whether it’s a vague idea or a very concrete one there is an outcome. And what I’ve learned is that in most cases, if not in 100% of the cases, the person is heading for disappointment because that expectation of an outcome will result in it being disappointed. The more vague it is the longer you can keep going, pretending that it’s all going to work out because you pretended expectation more and changes as time goes on and you’re in a kind of self-deluded mindset. But when you get really specific when you name the dates and times and outcomes, there’s where you can run into real trouble and you know the same sort of cheating can happen because you settle for something knowing that you’ve settled. So you just bring into the picture here the idea of wasting time together is that there is no agenda that just simply being with one another is what you desire and I don’t know if there’s a trust that being together will result in something that neither one of us have any control over?

So the idea of wasting time with God really intrigues me.

As I thought this over this morning, I listened to Brendan Manning‘s example of his testimony of shutting out the outside world and it’s so I turned off my worship app praise music, which was my attempt to spend time with God in the morning to put him first, but it feels so empty and I don’t get moved by it. So I switched it off, and drove in the dark in silence, my wife, Cheryl likes to do it this way she rails against always having to have music on. It’s interesting how God speaks through my wife.

So I drove along with the only sound being the bus humming along the highway.

And my thoughts meandered. I thought about Minecraft, a game where you become Steve you’re born into a world naked, yes he do have some clothes on, but they’re not any use against the monsters that come out at night and nighttime falls about 10 minutes after you start the game so you either have to make yourself a shelter or get some armor. So momentarily I thought well maybe God‘s love is like that maybe I’m God in the situation and I love Steve because? But then I realized I am Steve! I am that guy in the game the fact that I preserve him protect him work with him he’s me! In that context, Steve is me! And Steve has no will of his own. He is 100% the product of my plans versus the computer program. There are limitations necessarily in place and challenges and as I get to know them, I endeavour to overcome them.

 I wish I was more educated so I could come up with some short handled literary term for this! But Anne Lamott would chide me for not putting it into my own words anyways.

So just think of some grumpy old person saying well that was a waste of my time, and two teenagers laughing saying yeah let’s go waste each other’s time! Is it sarcasm? 

I don’t know if everyone has it, but I know that I have it. This incessant need built inside of me to always have a purpose for their always to be a purpose for everything an outcome a profit.

I think of a person who is gathering their strength from what all this effort will resulted and whether it’s a vague idea or a very concrete one there is an outcome. And what I’ve learned is that in most cases, if not in 100% of the cases, the person is heading for disappointment because that expectation of an outcome will result in it being disappointed. The more vague it is the longer you can keep going, pretending that it’s all going to work out because you pretended expectation more and changes as time goes on and you’re in a kind of self-deluded mindset. But when you get really specific when you name the dates and times and outcomes, there’s where you can run into real trouble and you know the same sort of cheating can happen because you settle for something knowing that you’ve settled. So you just bring into the picture here the idea of wasting time together is that there is no agenda that just simply being with one another is what you desire and I don’t know if there’s a trust that being together will result in something that neither one of us have any control over?

So the idea of wasting time with God really intrigues me.

As I thought this over this morning, I listened to Brendan Manning‘s example of his testimony of shutting out the outside world and it’s so I turned off my worship app praise music, which was my attempt to spend time with God in the morning to put him first, but it feels so empty and I don’t get moved by it. So I switched it off, and drove in the dark in silence, my wife, Cheryl likes to do it this way she rails against always having to have music on. It’s interesting how God speaks through my wife.

So I drove along with the only sound being the bus humming along the highway.

And my thoughts meandered. I thought about Minecraft, a game where you become Steve you’re born into a world naked, yes he do have some clothes on, but they’re not any use against the monsters that come out at night and nighttime falls about 10 minutes after you start the game so you either have to make yourself a shelter or get some armor. So momentarily I thought well maybe God‘s love is like that maybe I’m God in the situation and I love Steve because? But then I realized I am Steve! I am that guy in the game the fact that I preserve him protect him work with him he’s me! In that context, Steve is me! And Steve has no will of his own. He is 100% the product of my plans versus the computer program. There are limitations necessarily in place and challenges and as I get to know them, I endeavour to overcome them.

But that isn’t the picture of our lives in Christ! We have free will. We are made in his image!

I am disconnected from my self in some ways. Yet God breaks through all the time. Every so often throughout my day, I see a bent branch, a foot print on the foliage, and I realize he is here all around me.

That’s poetry, right? That’s a “what the hirkin vic”

Yesterday… that notion to call my brother…