As Threatened...

I mentioned in my last blog entry that I'd tell you some of the consequences of the Screen Fast here at Canowindra, but before that I'd like to plug another blog. My pal and bosom buddy Terry Wright has finally joined the digital age of "BY THE SEVEN HELLS, I'M GOING TO RANT AND YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME!" and started blogging. His blog has inspired me a little, and helped me to see how it should be done. You can find his musings here -

http://aardvarkconundrum.blogspot.com/

I've really enjoyed reading his reminiscences and thoughts on stuff, even though he has all the literary panache of a sloth who has somehow got his claws on a box of child's crayons.

Anyway, on with the show. As you may have noted from a previous post, for a month I challenged myself to remove 'unproductive screen time' from my life. Without wishing to argue what counts as 'productive' or not, this meant that I resolved to cease from purposeless Internet surfing, playing video games and watching movies or television. As well as increasing the amount of work that I got through, this left me with some free time to fill. I decided to fill it with things that contributed to something - in other words, I tried to make my free time productive rather than simply amusing. It's a bit like the story that one of the guys here told me recently - two men can be making bricks, but if you ask them what they are doing one will tell you that he's making bricks and the other will tell you that he's building a cathedral. I wanted to make sure that even with my 'free' time I was building a cathedral. Not literally, of course. That would be missing the point of the metaphor. No, what I wanted was to do things that I considered fun/relaxing but would also contribute to the Kingdom of God in some way.

For me, one of my current outlets is board games. I like to play board games. In fact, I made a conscious decision last year to make that my primary hobby rather than video games, simply because it forced me to mix with people and build up relationships. But playing board games depends on having willing victims to play with. So what else could I do with my alone time?

A couple of years ago, one of the Cornerstone guys (Pete Volkofsky - who the spell-checker tells me should be called Pete Volkswagon) was talking about how we can frustrate God through what we do with out time. His point was that maybe we have gifts or opportunities that God has given us, but by not using them we are frustrating what God wants to do through us. Before anyone starts deconstructing the theology behind statements like this, I'll jump in and say that it really challenged me. I knew that there were opportunities that I had that I was not taking full advantage of, and that it was disobedient of me to not do so.

As a result of Pete's challenge I went out and finished a piece of Interactive Fiction that I was writing called A Fine Day for Reaping. It placed fairly respectably in the annual IF Comp, but more importantly it actually won an XYZZY award for 'Best Story'. I've been deliberately vague there, so if you don't have a clue what I'm talking about then Google is your friend.

Anyway, that went off the boil again until the Screen Fast, which I took as another challenge from God to make sure that I was making my time count and using the gifts that He has given me. I've begun exploring my Interactive Fiction projects again, with the aim of trying to tell stories that are worth telling. I'm not sure how well I'll go with that, but we'll see.

The point of this post really is to challenge those of you who are reading to think about how you spend your 'free' time. The temptation we face is to compartmentalise our lives into various sections that don't interact with each other. Our work doesn't touch our home lives which doesn't touch our social lives which doesn't touch our free time which doesn't touch our work lives and so on. The real danger is that those of us who are Christians can divorce God from an aspect of our life. In fact, it would be wrong to even think of God as just a part of our lives - He should be the meta narrative which shapes everything in our lives. So we shouldn't just be looking at how our work and spiritual lives can interact (for example) but rather we should be submitting our work life to our spiritual life. This also goes for our spare time. It's not a part of life that is exempt from God's influence because it's my time. Rather, it's an opportunity to be free to do the things that we enjoy doing for God's glory. Maybe for you that simply means that you stop doing your hobby by yourself, but you actually get out and meet like-minded people with the aim of being the presence of Christ in their lives. Maybe - like me - the thing that you actually enjoy doing is something that you can blatantly subvert for God's purposes. If so, then do it! No-one said that you couldn't seek first the Kingdom and have fun at the same time.

Here's a quote from Frederick Buechner, which - if you let it - could change the way that you think about God's plan for you.

"The place that God calls you to is the place where your deepest gladness and the world's deepest hunger will meet."

So what does that place look like for you? Where do you find joy, but also see a deep need? Answer that question, and then you'll know what you should be doing with your free time.