The Gift of Nothing to Do
When I was a child, my grandparents retired to a rural lake in North Carolina. By rural, I mean the middle of nowhere. Each summer, I spent weeks with them, long days marked by simmering heat that seemed to radiate through my body as I circled my bike around and around on their concrete patio.
I loved being with my grandparents, but most days, I woke up to navigate a child’s worst nightmare: nothing to do. In the many hours between playing Scrabble with my grandmother or watching my grandfather make wooden crafts in his basement workshop, I could hear the hands of the mantel clock ticking.
But even though I did not appreciate it back then, something good came of all that unstructured time. Creativity blossomed out of my boredom. I discovered that I could turn the red clay at the lake’s watery edge into pots. The hot sun, like a kiln, baked and cracked them dry. Old country roads yielded surprising wildflower crops that I attempted to turn into paper. On rainy days, needle and thread turned fabric scraps from my grandmother’s sewing basket into sleeping bags for my stuffed animals.
With the constant hum of the air conditioning unit as background music, I would craft fiction stories on any pad of paper I could find. My grandmother’s Southern Living magazines yielded fascinating house plans, which I studied carefully before sketching my own designs.
In the long hours after lunch, dinner beckoned like an oasis in a seemingly endless desert of time. But one afternoon, I made a discovery. While gathering eggs from the chickens, I realized that I could crawl atop the one-story barn via the chicken coop. The evergreen-sheltered roof made the perfect hideout from the heat of the day. From there, I would stare up at the sky, watching as clouds formed into dogs and kites before morphing into whales and butterflies.
When I look back on those days, I am surprised to realize how much I miss them. I miss the abundance of time the carefree summers of childhood afforded me, before the endless work of modern adulthood flooded my calendar, before cyberspace consumed quiet space. I miss the luxury of having hours when my body could wander, and my mind could wonder.
In my youth, I did not know that having nothing to do was like holding treasure. In ignorance, I often threw it away. Time stretched before me then, but now I stretch out the time, trying to squeeze more into each minute than it can hold. The work of living, loving, and caring for others means that unfettered moments are no longer abundant. Extra hours no longer lie out in the open to grab at will; they are buried under a mountain of tasks and responsibilities. It is a mining job. Each day, I dig and claw back little nuggets of it, because I now know that time is the most valuable resource for growing good things.
Not only does creativity flourish when given enough time with raw materials, but faith deepens with time spent reading the Bible, meditating on its words, and praying. Whereas creativity requires space to foster connections and expand ideas, faith needs space for God to do his good work in us. Time is the water that soaks his words into our hearts.
In childhood, time’s shackles are loose. Adulthood requires a conscious effort to break free from the chains of distraction and responsibility to make time for God. Too often in my days, someone or something threatens this sacred space. My own mind is the biggest predator, recalling the laundry left in the washer, a friend in need, or an appointment I forgot to schedule. But the reward for protecting time and offering it to God is immeasurable.
When I am with God, the clock becomes irrelevant. My soul wanders down new paths, stumbling upon beauty and truth like wildflowers on a country lane. My spirit revives when I read the Bible and mull over its words. Resting in God and basking in the light of the Son, above the din of the world’s noise, God shapes me into something new. Meditating on the truth, turning his words over like clouds, I watch in wonder as they take on new shapes and reveal surprising things.
In the space of time, God captivates us; the cares of the world fall away – or at least, they loosen their grip. Our tired, restless spirits stop fluttering around and become still, like birds finding a perch after a long flight. Spending time with God enables us to stop doing and experience the peace that comes with simply being, like trees by a stream, soaking up the sun and water.
It may feel boring at first to sit quietly with God, doing nothing. But maybe the creativity born out of childhood boredom is a spiritual training ground. In the open space of youth, we learned that “nothing to do” was the soil in which abundant fruit grew. And now, as we offer our time and the raw materials of ourselves to the Creator of Time, he creates new hearts in us. There really is nothing to do but rest in his work. And that is a gift.
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Image credit: Meg Wilcock on Unsplash