I posted this yesterday on Facebook but I want to share it here and then add a bit of additional commentary.

It’s easy to tell just by looking around that we are busier than ever before. We used to work a shift at the mill, all day on a farm, or keep business hours in the city, but even if you worked hard it ended and everyone went home. Now we take work with us and clients/customers/bosses expect to be able to reach us anytime. You can put in a full day, then continue making work calls on your dive home then check and reply to emails once at your house. (I’m going to pretend no one is readying email while driving but I know better.)

A generation of young adults have grown up looking at screens. It might have started with a kid’s tablet or a parent handing them their phone. The parents did not grow up with that and didn’t realize what would happen. Phones, tablets and laptops connect to the internet and are active engagement not just passive. They stimulate the brain and never allow periods of “calm.” Kids brains are neuroplastic, they are forming and respond to stimuli during the formation process. Calm used to be normal, and there were periods of activity. Young adults have grown up without the calm periods in between periods of stimulation. If everything is still and quiet for a minute, their brains interpret that as something wrong.

We used to have time to read a book or take a walk after dinner. We don’t anymore. And this is not a new trend brought on by social media or smart phones. For most of human history we did not produce or use electricity. Electric lights meant that work did not have to stop when it got dark. Look up the roaring 20’s (referring to the 1920’s). For the first time you could work all day and then drive a car to a baseball game or dance hall after dark. Factories could run all day and all night, and technology always develops faster than legislation so at first workers, including children, were expect to put in 12 to 18 hour shifts.

Technologies such as typewriters, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators and telephones were meant to make tasks faster and easier. But as those things happened we decided we needed to complete more tasks. Today we have internet and social media on our phones, Door Dash, and a few places have self driving taxis. But we keep upping the level of productivity we expect of ourselves instead of letting those technologies make our lives easier. You can microwave a meal in a minute or two instead of cooking an hour or two; but what are you doing with those extra hours? Are you more relaxed at bedtime than your grandparents were?

Find moments of calm in your day. Schedule it if you have to; there are apps for your phone that remind you to breathe. Teach your kids that being bored for short periods of time is normal and people need that for their physical and mental well-being. Technology is neither good nor bad; it produces tools and it is up to us, whether we realize it or not, how we use them.

Those are just current facts with some historical perspective, there is nothing religious or uniquely Christian about these observations. Even secular child psychologists can see that we are not meant to be keyed up 24/7. But let’s add some biblical perspective to better understand why. In Genesis 2, God worked six days and then rested. The very nature of the world is that the greater light shines during the day and moon and stars give a little bit of light at night. A day of Sabbath rest was included in the 10 Commandments, first listed in Exodus 20. Jesus said in John 9:4 “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” He was speaking metaphorically but his metaphor about the end of his labor was based on the real world because daily work ended each evening. That is by God’s design.

Psalm 46:10 tells us to be still and know that he is God. Being too lazy to move, or being filled with fear, are ways the devil keeps some from doing anything for God. But don’t fooled into thinking that just because you are busy, productive, or working yourself to exhaustion that you are in God’s will either. You can work yourself to death for the church or on the mission field and still not necessarily be doing God’s will. Bruce Wilkinson writes about pruning in his book Secrets of the Vine. Let God take away the things you don’t need to focus on so you can direct more energy into the things that he leaves. Let him direct your steps. Find time to be still. Breathe. Take care of yourself so that you are in better condition to take of others. Share these lessons with up and coming generations.