Pastor Parker
“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time, for the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:15-16
A few weeks ago I wrote about the need for us to be thoughtful about our devotional habits in the new year – how will we be systematically reading Scripture and hearing from the Lord? As this new year has come upon us, I’ve tried to think carefully about the preciousness of time, as well. I’m about to turn 40, and I don’t know how many more years I have left, but I do feel the limits of that time more than when I felt invincible in my 20s. I see that the time will disappear before I know it. That makes reflecting upon Paul’s words even more appropriate: redeeming the time.
The structure of each day is a choice: what will I use my time for? What will occupy my heart, my mind, and my actions? The answer is often dictated by the habits and routines that we lock ourselves into. To deal with this realization, some people write resolutions each year.
One problem with resolutions is that they are usually very vague: “Lose some weight,” “Read more books,” “Be a better dad.” I’ve talked to plenty of people who tell me that they don’t do new year’s resolutions (some of them in my own house) which is totally their prerogative. However, I find that the end of one year and the beginning of another is as good a time as any to pause, reflect, and assess what routines (both good and bad) have been growing in my own life: which do I want to see continue, and which do I want to see diminish? I’m going to address three specific things I plan to do this next year. I’m sharing these as ideas, but not commandments. These are opportunities for you to reflect, but are not meant to be prescriptions. Perhaps the specificity of these will encourage you to reflect on your own habits.
1. Replacing Podcasts with Audiobooks
In our family, we at least spend an hour a day in the car picking up kids, driving around. In reflecting on the past year I realized that my podcast feed was always going, to the point that it almost felt like a chore to keep up with. It was also filling up time that should have been spent in prayer. I made the decision to go in and unfollow 2/3 of the podcast subscriptions (keeping the Evergreen PCA podcast feed, of course). Instead, I got a subscription to Audible, and plan on replacing some of my podcast diet with audiobooks instead.
I’m currently listening to a book on the life of Justice John Marshall Harlan called The Great Dissenter. After that I’ll be listening to Carl Trueman’s recent hit The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. I feel like this, and prayer will be better use of my drive time in the car than listening to people jabber away on numerous podcasts.
2. Replacing News Consumption with News Aggregation
I have a habit of browsing news websites and reading news stories, nearly all of whom make money off my clicks. This incentivizes outrageous headlines and coverage. I am suspicions of companies with a financial incentive to make me angry or frustrated. I already tend toward being an anxious person, and am convinced that news websites or TV news plays a role in that. Are you more angry than you used to be? More anxious? Perhaps it’s time to reflect on how much news you’re consuming. Perhaps there are better things for you to make a part of your regular diet.
I recently discovered this past year that there are many trustworthy organizations that make money from subscriptions, not ads (using platforms such as Substack). which will cover the news and tell you what is most important that you need to know each day. I get an email each morning (in my case from The Dispatch) that tells me what happened yesterday that their editors think is crucial for me to know. That email usually contains one or two in-depth stories and then a series of paragraph long summaries of other news items with links to more on the story if I’m interested. What is missing is the sort of baseless speculation meant to fill up air-time that occupies much of (especially TV) news. In about 5-10 minutes I will read summaries of the biggest things that floated to the top of the news yesterday, which is in some ways how print media used to work. It also resists the impulse of people to give hot takes without having all of the information first. It isn’t perfect, but it is an improvement on my old habit.
Do you need to revamp how much news you watch, and how you get it? Consider how it could be adversely affecting you. Perhaps planning on how to watch and read less news is a good idea in the coming year.
3. Staying Away From Social Media
This isn’t a change for me, this is a doubling down! It might be worth reminding you all that as American society draws closer to another election cycle, you may like the people in your life a lot better if you aren’t on social media together. Without Facebook or Twitter, we can still text, call, and send photos to each other, but without an algorithm expressly designed to keep us hooked and generating ad revenue for the machine, we can have more intimate friendships than the passive wall of photos and opinions. While I’ve already eliminated social media from my life, I am committed in 2022 to keeping it that way. I like the person that I am away from the scrolling news feed, and I feel like I waste less time staring at a screen.
Conclusion
You may have noticed a theme here: how will I be using my time in 2022? In some ways, everything here is organized around this one idea: what can I do that is profitable, but not necessarily more productive? In some ways, eliminating constant news consumption and social media should create more breathing room in the day. I’ve been learning about myself that cramming more items into my day in the name of greater productivity may diminish my own ability to do other things well, and may even feed existing anxieties (or – the case of news – create new ones).
I cannot add more hours to my day, but I can use those hours better. If we push ourselves to fill every spare moment, but don’t allow any breathing room we may discover that we become less thoughtful, less prayerful, less biblically minded, and less patient.
“Redeeming the time, for the days are evil.”