I have a new perspective in 2020 and for the next decade. I’ve come to realize it’s not the big epic moments that shape us the most. Instead it’s the ordinary things which shape us. Consider a few things.
Let’s rewind to 2010. What if you’d set a goal of reading just one chapter of the Bible per day. Did you realize that you would have read through the entire Bible almost 4 times?
What if you made a goal of praying 15 minutes per day. Did you know that would have led to 912 hours over the last 10 years?
What if you decided that you’d share the gospel of Jesus with 1 person per week. And you did this for the past decade. Did you know you would have shared the gospel with 521 people?
Or maybe you made a goal to spend 1 quality hour per day with your spouse and or your kids. That means no phone, no distractions, just good quality time. That would be 3,650 hours in the past decade. Or 152 entire 24 hour days.
What would happen if you decided to spend something like 2 hours per week really getting to know somebody. Maybe you make it a goal to ask somebody out for lunch at least once a week, or have a coffee with someone. You dedicate 2 hours per week to engaging another human being. You know that would be 1,040 hours over a decade. Can you imagine the relational depth that could be fostered in that time? What if you said, I’m going to pick one person and actively disciple them. 2 hours per week. You do that for a decade…what is that 1000 hours going to do?
Or consider reading. At even a below average speed if you had read for 30 minutes a day that would have led to 73,000 pages. Can you think of all the great books you could have devoured?
But, did you know that the average person spends 4 hours per day on their phone. That’ll be 14,600 hours per decade. Or 608 days. That means of a decade you’ll spend almost 2 full years of that on your phone. Now it’s pretty hard to actually judge what you are doing on your phone. It might be something relationship building. It could be something that truly is of value. But I can tell you that statistics show that half the time on your phone is spent on social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat). That’s a lot of cat videos. So cut those 14,600 hours in half and you’ve got 7300 hours on social media in the next decade.
We’re also watching on average 5 hours of television per day. Again when you math that out it means 2 of the 10 years is going to be spent watching TV. Granted most people are on their phone and television at the same time. But I’m sharing all of this to say that ordinary activities shape us. Just an ordinary activity like checking your phone. Scrolling through Facebook. Watching a video on YouTube is shaping you. Why? Because while those big epic moments are shaping and transformative for us we truly are what we do in those ordinary moments. That shapes us far more in the long run.
But we live in a microwave culture. We want what we want and we want it now. We move from epic thing to epic thing and think that it’s going to shape us. Honestly, what we do is we give our ordinary moments to the things of the world and plead with God to capture us with those epic times. I’m going to dedicate a weekend to you, Lord. And he shows up. He’s gracious. He transforms. He does things at conferences and stuff. Don’t hear me wrong. But what if God had the ordinary this year? This decade?
So I’m going to commit myself to just doing simple ordinary things for a decade and see what happens.
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