Our economy is built on distraction. Built as it is on services, it relies on a widespread sense of busyness–a feeling that there is too much to do and not time enough to do it.
When we take this presupposition as true there follows a line of successive consequences.
We begin to calculate the cost of our time against the cost of our tasks to be done.
Once this is habit takes root we struggle with a perpetual calculus over whether we are engaged in the right task. And we find ourselves tempted put aside things that seem to not measure up.
Our economy offers us services that will help us overcome the limits of time and effortlessly get things done.
A yard service.
A maid.
A meal service.
Dry-cleaning and laundry services.
A handyman.
There’s nothing wrong with engaging the services of any or all of these.
At the same time, there is something degrading in the belief that moving the yard, cleaning the toilet, preparing a meal, ironing a shirt, or painting a door is somehow either a poor use of time or, worse, beneath us.
When we believe that the only memories or moments that count are those experienced on a scenic shore on the far side of the world, we believe a lie.
When we believe that anything short of effortless perfection–in keeping house, in raising kids, in tending to our health–is the only sign of a good life, we believe a lie.
Our culture lauds the big, the loud, the flashy, and the extreme. The Kingdom of Heaven is rarely made of such things.
Let’s resolve to look search for the good in ordinary things and ordinary people. Let’s find God in the ordinary things of life. And let’s live life to its fullest.
Jeff Gissing 