The Gift of Empty Space--December 9, 2021

 

The Gift of Empty Space--December 9, 2021

It is so easy for this season to become nothing but a stack of to-do lists.  Resist that temptation.  Choose differently.  

Refuse to get sucked into the vortex of itemized checkboxes and chores to be accomplished--all by December 25th, of course! While the busy-ness whirls around you, keep yourself connected to other people by making time for them.  Hold open time in your day, even if it feels just like empty (wasted) space on your calendar, for the possibility of where you might be needed--just for conversation with someone else.

These days, I find myself keeping all sorts of running checklists: presents that have been ordered or bought, along with presents that have arrived and are waiting to be wrapped... items to do at work for the day, the week, and the season... phone calls to make and emails to reply to... along with the usual routines of laundry, cooking, and keeping some level of awareness of whether my kids are doing their homework or not.  You have your own set of lists, I'm sure.  And there's nothing wrong with having those things to do in life, or keeping track of what you have to do each day, either.  It's better than constantly letting people down because you haven't done what you were supposed to do at any rate. 

But with the busyness of the pre-Christmas season (which adds itself to the regular busyness of life), it is very easy to become cut off from other people... or to lose focus on what is most important--or who, rather, is most important. It's easy to see the day ahead of you only in terms of how many errands can be checked off between work and bed, or how many things can be cleared off the desk before quitting time.  And when we do that--when we slide too far into that mentality of finishing tasks in the name of "preparing for Christmas"--we can forget that it is for people, not productivity, that Jesus came.  We can forget that it is God's love for human beings like us that prompted God's coming in a human life like ours. And we can forget that the Jesus whose birth we celebrate this season was always willing to let himself be held up for a conversation with someone who needed to talk.  

This year, I am trying for my own part to think differently, despite the pull of the to-do list and its promises of rewards for productivity.  I am trying to start from the premise that my ways of preparing for Jesus' coming and celebrating his birth should make me more like him, not less.  That just seems reasonable.  If my pre-Christmas practices are making me meaner, or less compassionate, something has gone wrong.  If my observation of Advent is making me less attentive to other human beings in the name of looking busy, I am missing the point.  And if my focus on filling every moment with as much accomplishment as possible makes me unable to be detoured when someone else needs me to listen, well, I fear that is making me less like Jesus rather than more.

So today, my own dare--and one I'll offer to you as well--is to make the time for conversation with someone.  Hold open time--let there be wiggle room in your day, whether at work or at home or in between--so that you are available.  Give the gift of empty space that someone else might--or might not--ask of you.  And when someone reaches out needing to talk, needing to share something, or needing to process some heartache weighing on them, or even just to check in with you, set aside the idol of accomplishment... and give them the time.

And let that become a gift in both directions--a gift for the person you are making time for, and for yourself as well.  That's just it: our relentless devotion to our to-do lists ends up being a life-draining ordeal for us.  It never lets up, and it never gives us rest, and it certainly never lets us find joy in being with other people just for the sake of being with them.  The to-do list, especially the Christmas to-do list, may be an efficient organizational tool, but it is also a ruthless master.  Holding open time in our day that isn't meant to "check stuff off the list" but is open for reaching out to other people has a way of breaking that master's power over us, and keeping our to-do lists as tools rather than tyrants.

Using time differently will take some practice, to be sure.  It will mean we have to be uncomfortable with spaces in our days that aren't crammed full of things we need to finish, and it will probably mean learning to be ok with having fewer check marks of things we've done.  But it will also mean that we are available to be more human--and to see again our own humanity, with our need to talk and to be listened to, our need for pauses and breaks, our need for the unexpected conversation that was possible because we weren't in a rush to get somewhere else.

So today, let us dare to give the gift that at first looks like nothing but empty space. Let us hold open the space in our days and in our lives for conversation with people we haven't made appointments with, but whose paths will cross our own unexpectedly.  And when they do, we can choose to be ready to receive them... and to have the time to give them.

Lord Jesus, you entered into our time and our lives as one of us, simply for the love of being in relationship with us.  When we forget that, pull us back, in relationship to you and in connection with those around us whom you love as well.