A contingent of us are about to go to synod in Monument Colorado. That means, for me at least, one lay-over each way. On the way there I go HNL —> PHX —> DEN and on the way back DEN —> LAX —> HNL. This means a lot of seemingly “wasted time”: shuttling to airports, standing in multiple lines, trafficking on the runway, more queuing-up for more lines, boarding, deplaning, taking one’s seats, waiting at curbsides, etc.
In our efficiency addicted culture in which all our minutes must weigh on the scales of utility such moments are fertile for frustration. “Waste of time!” we mutter under our breath when the TSA agent pulls someone aside and stalls the line. We look-up “life-hacks” (wicked terrible evil phrase) to help us avoid the waste of time —which help us make all our moments of waiting ultimately productive and efficient. “Because we look at life exclusively from the perspective of work and performance, we view inactivity as a deficiency that must be overcome as quickly as possible” explains Byung-Chul Han (2024: 1).
I must confess that my first thought upon seeing a multi-hour lay-over on my homebound itinerary was to remember to keep certain books in my carry-on so that I can make sure to use the time to get work done (as opposed to sitting-down, praying, reflecting on how synod went, etc.) , accompanied by that slight sweaty sensation —though momentary— of feeling behind. Behind what? Time.
Ultimately we do not conceive of time as a gift, we see it more like dead matter waiting to be arranged or whipped into meaningfulness. When we have an abundance of time we refer to it as “time to kill.” “It is not free, living time, it is dead time” (Han, 2024: 2). And here we are very wrong. Our times are in God’s hands (Ps. 31:15), and it is precisely in the times which He has given us that we are brought into an encounter with him. Time is the form that our experience of eternity takes.
This may all sound “philosophical” but there is a very practical application: your life is full of waiting and seeming waste. In those pukas we often rush to fill in the aperture of our perceived “dead time” with things which we hope will “fill-in” the emptieness of the “not doing anything” (screens, ideness, bingeing, tuning-in and tuning-out, work, more productive labor, etc.) instead of finding in the grace of the “wasted times” the space for true luxuries (prayer, reflection, contemplation, reading, making-and-not-merely-listening-to music, walking, sitting-and-doing-nothing).
Here’s what I have become convinced of: in those wasted spaces on my schedule is an encounter with the luxuriating God of eternity, the God of both my somethingness and my nothingness; the God for whom there is no “dead time” but rather a bright fullness of all times. Aim to make of at least a few of those “doing nothing moments” a place of encounter with the God of your times. Fill your empty times with the fullness of his eternity.