A sure sign that a friendship is taking off or that you are in love is that you don’t mind wasting time together. Who cares if you are just sitting and talking? For that matter, who cares if you are just riding along together in the car in silence? You are together and that is all that matters. It makes you happy and in essence you are saying, “With this limited time I have on earth, I am willing and/or desirous to waste it with you just being in your presence. We don’t have to accomplish anything, earn money, or come to any great revelations, it is simply enough to be with each other.”
It is not much different with God. Waste time with God. It is not always about completing a set of prayers or pushing through a topic that you need to understand as good as those things can be. Did you ever just consider wasting time with God? Stop by a parish and make a holy hour, or do 10 minutes in your house imagining Jesus in the chair across from you, go for a walk and take Jesus along. We have two things working against us. One is our great Protestant work ethic. We always feel that we have to be producing something. Time with another can mean getting something done. At the other end is the complete crash and veg-out when we accomplish less than nothing such as when plopping down in front of the television or computer. In between is a loving and refreshing waste of time with those you love and with God. At the one end it requires a disengaging of the need for time to always be put good use (you will experience withdrawal) and at the other end it requires energy to sit up, turn off an electronic device that is pumping information into you and kick starting the brain (you will experience a certain exersion.) But you might (at least eventually) experience a connection to the One Who loves you and wants to waste time with you.
2 comments:
I am real good at time-wasting
This reminds me of Josef Pieper's book, "Leisure: The Basis of Culture."
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