Wasting time with God?

Do you ever feel like you’ve wasted time? I sometimes do. And what is “wasting time?” For me I think it is time I spend on activities that are not productive towards checking off the items I put on my To Do list. The things I consider time-wasters in Congo are playing Free Cell or another computer game during the day, getting up from siesta and reading several articles in a magazine or the entire magazine before I work on my life anything else I consider non-productive during the day.

I’m reading the book THE GIFT OF BEING YOURSELF by David Benner. In the chapter “Knowing God,” Benner writes: “What God wants is simply our presence, even if it feels like a waste of potentially productive time. That is what friends do together-they waste time with each other.” (p. 40)

That speaks to me in a profound way, what friends do is to waste time with each other. I think back to courting Cindy. How much time did we spend together just doing whatever? Some of it was ‘wasted’ in the sense that it we weren’t doing anything special, we were just together. At times we knew we had homework to do or a test to study for and we just put those things aside to be together not doing anything in particular. I think of other friends where when we’re together we can go on and on talking about many things and sharing life. Some of the time is “productive” for whatever ministry issues we have to discuss and other time is just being with a friend, sharing life, ‘wasting time’ together. So is that ‘wasting time’? Not really because it is deepening a relationship.

Back to Benner’s statement: “What God wants is simply our presence.” To help with this he suggests that “simply pondering the event [in Christ’s life]-allowing ourselves to daydream on it-is sharing Jesus’ experience with him.” (p. 39) It is entering into Jesus’ experience, his feelings and passions. Benner goes on to say, “There is no substitute for meditation on the life of Jesus if we seek to ground our God knowing in the Gospels…Gospel meditation is gazing on Christ.”

My challenge is to learn something new and to carve out or set aside the time to ponder events in Christ’s life, to waste time with God. I do want to know Him. Lord, help me grow in this area. Help me learn to ‘waste time’
with you.