Finding God in the Cracks
Nearly every morning a series of patterned vibrations and soft music gradually wake me from sleep. My instinctual response is almost always the same: grab my phone and hit the snooze button once or twice. As I come to consciousness, I’m usually hit with a wave of fatigue and think to myself, “It can’t be time to wake up already. It feels like I just fell asleep.” Barely conscious, I check my overnight notifications to see what I missed during my seven to eight hours in bed. I usually check texts, then emails, and then social media. Depending on what I find, I can spend anywhere from ten to thirty minutes staring at my phone at the beginning of the day.
When my day starts out this way, it often begins a pattern for my gaze throughout the day. I’ll check out Instagram for five minutes. Later, I’ll check Twitter to see if there have been any updates about the impending social or political crises. During a work break, I’ll scroll through Facebook to see what my friends are up to. After getting the kids to bed, I’ll get lost in some Dunkademics YouTube Shorts (my basketball fandom knows no limits) or catch up on some nostalgic-sounding, unreleased Michael Jackson demos. The options are truly endless.
What about the Cracks?
While I consider myself busy, running at a frenetic pace, there are always cracks in my day. By cracks, I mean small five or ten-minute intervals of time that allow me to take a break or transition from one activity to another. Some of the cracks in my day include the few moments immediately after awakening, breaks between work tasks, minutes just before or after meals, transitioning from work to family time, etc. Regardless of our fast-paced schedule, most of us have small cracks of time when we task switch and catch our breath.
What do we fill these cracks with? Where do we run when we have a few minutes to slip away and be at ease? Too often, I run to my phone to see if there’s another red number just above the little black bell on Facebook. To learn if there’s another heart next to something I posted on Instagram or Twitter. To inquire if there’s another blue dot next to someone’s name in my messages app. There’s always something new demanding my attention, and I need to make sure I check in before it’s too late. I need another dopamine boost!
I am not a curmudgeon who only sees the goodness of life before 2007. (That’s the year the iPhone was unveiled.) However, I think it’s wise for us to assess whether we are making the best use of the time in these evil days (Eph. 5:16). This is why filling the cracks in our busy lives is of utmost importance. Making the best use of our time means making the best use of the few minutes we have here and there. Doing some quick math reveals that fifteen minutes of spare time each day adds up to over six months of free time over the next fifty years. How do you want to spend that six months?
The Importance of Our Spare Time
I’m not advocating against using our free time to enjoy God through His creation. It’s important to get ice cream with friends and family. It’s totally fine to scroll through social media or read this article in your when you’ve got a few minutes to spare. We are free in Christ to use our spare time in a variety of ways, but we should also make sure we use this time wisely and intentionally because we will never get it back. We should count the cost of using our time in ways that are less profitable, especially when we feel that we lack time to pray more, read more, spend more time with our families, get more physically fit, etc.
Throughout the Scriptures we get glimpses of imperfect people. However imperfect they may be, they serve as examples for us—sometimes to be imitated and sometimes to be avoided (1 Cor. 10:11). In the case of using time wisely, we have some great examples and exhortations for how to do this well. Isaac was out meditating in the field when his soon-to-be wife arrived (Gen. 24:63). The blessed man meditates on God’s law day and night (Ps. 1:2). David calls God’s people to ponder on their beds rather than sin in anger (Ps. 4:4). After hearing the news of Mary’s pregnancy Joseph was considering the news he had just received (Matt. 1:20). Mary pondered and treasured in her heart the glorious praises about her son, Jesus (Luke 2:19). All highlight the importance of simple, poignant moments.
Find God in the Cracks
If we are honest about the lure of technology, we can acknowledge the day and night presence of our devices. They were invented to make our important tasks easier and our relationships better. However, like mortar between bricks, we’ve allowed our devices to be the glue that holds our lives together. This is our problem. As we ponder the implications of technology for our own lives we are not left without at least a few options.
We can use technology to help us find God in the cracks. The app stores on our phones contain apps for reading the Bible, listening to the Word, praying better, listening to good Christian books, and much more. Our web browsers host extensive Bible software, commentaries, and much more. For many, these options make seeking the Lord’s face much easier day in and day out. We can listen to the Bible while we take our morning walks. We can listen to edifying sermons or podcast episodes while we fix dinner. We can drift off to sleep as we listen to biblical meditations. For many, leveraging technology in this way will help make the best use of time.
We can remove technology to make space for God in the cracks. Some of us will choose to ditch the technology—at least in between times. This may look like taking a walk, in solitude, each day without a phone nearby. It may be a rule of life that says, “No Bible, no browsing.” This may mean no phones in the bedroom, bathroom, or prayer closet.
Shortly after penning this article, I began reading Jordan Raynor’s Redeeming Your Time. He has a short section on filling the cracks and crevices of your day, and his is advice is to “start small by refusing to fill the cracks and crevices of your day with noise” (73). For many of us—especially the avid readers and learners—this advice couldn’t be more timely. Sometimes we need fewer inputs and more time being still and knowing that the Lord is God (Ps. 46:10). Our aim shouldn’t just be the removal of technology but rather the replacement of technology with something, or Someone, eternally more life giving.
We can freely use technology without any sort of guardrails. We can take a laissez-faire approach to our technology use. We may argue, like the Corinthians, that all things are lawful. We may argue that we need to be available and flexible, and such restrictions on our phone use could actually hinder our lives more than serve our needs. We could take the position that a couple of hours of gaming and scrolling isn’t bad for our souls at all. There is truly Christian liberty here, but this is the riskiest option to choose because it’s tough to walk the thin line between using technology diligently and being dominated by it (1 Cor. 6:12).
God Is Our “Why”
Regardless of how you choose to use technology, we must remember our why. In Christ, we have a new reason to live. We aren’t merely striving to be the most powerful productive people on the planet. That is futile. We strive to use our time wisely because we know there is an eternity on the other side of these seventy or eighty years on earth—both for us and our neighbors. God commands that we use that time wisely.
Chrys Jones (@chrys_jones) is a husband and father of four. He is a pastoral resident at Grace Church in Danville, Kentucky, and he writes regularly at dwellwithchrist.com. Chrys is also a Christian Hip-Hop artist and producer for Christcentric.