The Art of Being Bored

Today’s post is a “guest” spot from my lovely wife, Breanna. Breanna is the cofounder of Renovation Church and the love of my life!

Boredom. If you think about it when was the last time that you were truly bored? I mean genuinely and honestly by the dictionary definition of "bored." Here's the definition in case you need more help remembering the last time boredom hit you).

“Feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one's current activity.”

Let me ask it another way. When was the last time that you were "unoccupied?" Ok, now I bet you have a hard time pinning it down.

The truth of the matter is that we are rarely unoccupied. We live in an age where entertainment is constantly at our fingertips. We ALWAYS have something that occupies our minds. Our eyes always have something to look at, and our brains always have something to keep us occupied... or rather "checked out."

It has struck me every time I have a doctor's appointment. You sit in the waiting room. No one talks to each other. Everyone is zeroed in on that handy little device that allows us to escape the boredom of waiting for our name to be called.

You see it at traffic lights. After all, 90 seconds at a stop light is just so long to be waiting. So we grab our phone, check our notifications, even maybe answer a text back... then get honked at because the light turned green while we were checked out.

Before I go on, this is not an anti-cell phone rant; they are, after all, quite useful devices. (I'd get dreadfully lost without google maps!)

But I do want to challenge you today to think about the question, “what do I do with my boredom?”

I would argue that, as a society, we have gotten pretty bad at waiting. We have lost the ability to sit and think. And as believers, to listen and hear the voice of God. We spend any uncomfortable time waiting or "having nothing to do" by immediately finding a way to occupy our headspace. We go into the magical world of being checked out from the world around us and checked into a mindless brain occupying space that truthfully isn't doing much to benefit us.

We have so much access to information at our fingertips, but it is not doing much to grow us in wisdom. Only time with the Father can do that. Only in those quiet moments sitting and listening for the voice of God, can we grow within us the wisdom that we need to face the world around us. But how can we hear from Him when our mind is constantly occupied?

“Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above [the heavenly things], not on things that are on the earth [which have only temporal value].” Colossians 3:2

We need to free ourselves from the things that distract us from the eternal. We need to seek opportunities to “check in” to the voice of God rather than “check out” from our present reality; this is something that I've been thinking about, especially as a parent. How often do we hand our kids a screen when we need them to sit for a while? Long car rides are challenging, sitting quietly at a restaurant and waiting on your order is difficult, waiting at the doctor's office is tough, and the list could go on... But are we teaching our kids how to be bored? Are we teaching them how to use the creativity that God has hard-wired within them to occupy their time? Or even, hey, sometimes life is filled with waiting. An aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is patience. Do our kids know how to be patient anymore? Do we know how to be patient anymore?

We have learned and now are teaching them that it is ok to self-medicate with “checking out” from the painful reality of boredom by occupying our brain space with something that does nothing to draw us closer to the Father.

This week, I encourage you to take inventory of every time you have to sit and have absolutely nothing to do. Why not take the time to pray silently? Or to listen to the voice of God? Or maybe observe the beautiful world around you and take the time to marvel at the works of God's hands? Or maybe, just maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who is waiting as well. You never know what opportunities the Holy Spirit may be placing in front of you! Let's make it a goal to set our minds on Christ. After all, He is the cup that won't run dry. He is the most satisfying thought with which we can occupy our brain space. And let's experience the peace, rest and comfort we find when He is at the centre of our “boredom.”