One of my favorite books to read with the kids when they were little was Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day? I am fascinated by how people spend their time. If it weren't so intrusive and didn't sound rude, my top icebreaker question would not be "How are you?" but rather, "What do you do all day?" The answer would reveal a lot about what’s important to others and might also be instructive. I wonder if the days of others hold secrets to time management that I am missing.

Unfortunately, I can't satisfy my curiosity because asking people how they spend their time is like asking how they spend their money. Both are commodities, and how they are used is somewhat personal.

In some ways, time is more valuable than money. Obviously, funds are critical for daily needs. We can't pay for food, shelter, clothing, or other essentials with no money in the bank. But with no time in the life bank, we die. Also, God said to "make the best use of time"; how we spend it matters to Him. Unlike money – for which we can work to earn more (or receive help from another) – we can't recoup time we’ve already spent.

Time is also unique because there's no way of knowing how much we have. My human nature likes for me to believe that I have infinite amounts of it. Had I known the number of my days on earth at birth, would I have squandered so many? Once I complete the essential tasks of living and caring for my home and family, I act as if I can languish, play, sleep, eat, and talk to my heart's content, with no worries about the best use of my “free” hours. Maybe if I knew how much remained in the bank, I might spend some of it differently. Would I at least be more mindful of it?

I try to use time “wisely,” but I'm not always sure what that means. I know I waste little bits that add up to significant amounts. God has a name for too much leisure. The excessive pursuit of entertainment, frequent indulgence in sedentary behaviors, or overabundance of rest is called sloth.

It’s a good word for time-wasting. Sloths are sort of cute, but apparently, they don’t accomplish much. They can barely be bothered to budge from their perches. Only moving when absolutely necessary, they are terribly slow, traveling only five feet per minute! Some days, that’s how I feel.

For me, sloth is that point where downtime routinely exceeds my need for rest and meets an unwillingness to do something more valuable. It’s feeling too lazy to think of a better use of my time – like when I’ve already streamed one episode of a show and let another begin because I am too unmotivated to hit the stop button. Often this is a result of not keeping my priorities in order – not going to bed when I am tired, not using mental downtime to reorganize my thoughts or tasks, and not making time with God a priority.

As I examine my life to search for sloth, it isn’t an exercise in guilt-inducing, legalistic counting of every free minute. It’s more of an examination of how the expenditures from my bank of time reflect my heart’s overflow. But in the gracious freedom God gives for how to spend my gift of days, I struggle with doubts about how to best use my minutes. How do I know where good, God-ordained rest ends and where laziness begins? Where is the line between restful entertainment and squandered opportunities? How far is the distance between sabbatical and sloth?

When I was expecting my first son, my husband and I had a memorable discussion about whether I would continue working or stay home with the baby. Knowing what he knows now, my husband laughs at the questions he asked: "But what would you do all day? Sit around eating bonbons and watching Oprah?" I've been out of the workplace for twenty-five years now, and I can say that, even during illness, I have never had time to sit around eating bonbons or watching Oprah. There is too much to do – although much of it seems trivial.  

But when I take breaks from my work during the day or settle down to relax at the day’s end, I see how alluring distraction, downtime, and entertainment can be. There is a reason why God warned humans about the slippery slope of sedentary living. Rest is good and essential to well-being, but it can be easy to over-indulge, like eating too much food at the table. Filling the hours needed for rest with activities that aren’t restful is another issue that I suspect is related to sloth - pretending to rest but not actually resting.

No matter how productive and hard-working I think I am, sloth is a concern in this modern era of entertainment and comforts available on demand. Watching television shows, scouring the internet, or goofing off are so fun and self-gratifying they can be hard to stop. It’s way too easy to fill my free time scanning the latest social media feed rather than checking in with a neighbor who needs support, or completing a necessary task, or praying.

The Bible makes me firmly believe that God gave us the earth, people, and things to enjoy. He made us creative and caused us to delight in exercising our creativity with games, hobbies, stories, sports, and entertainment. But these gifts can be so pleasant they push us to a tipping point where rest turns into laziness – a reluctance to move, do, help, or love.

For parents, the issue of sloth has another layer – how to raise children to be mindful of the value of time. Is it okay to wake up each day and scroll media for thirty minutes before breakfast? Is it good to play video games for hours each day? How many hours? And I’m not indicting technology – I love it. Books, games, sleeping, playing – screens aren’t the only culprits luring us to sloth. Is there a healthy limit to how many books we need to read each week, or hours we need to lounge in bed? Technology may be one of the most enticing ways our minds are numbed and distracted excessively from seeing and caring about more important things, but it’s not the only way.  

Maybe God is concerned with sloth because it not only affects our ability to care for ourselves and others, it births spiritual apathy. Physical or mental laziness can quickly diminish "spiritual zeal." Filling every spare moment with mindless activity (or zero activity) distracts us from pursuing a closer relationship with God, and from seeing the needs of those around us.

Maybe the best definition of sloth is laziness that has seeped into the soul: a refusal to make an effort to care about what's most important to God – those things that have eternal value.

I have relationships to pursue, spiritual habits to cultivate, belongings to steward, people to serve, and good news to spread. I'm not God - but He’s giving me a chance to participate in His work. What am I missing if I take more rest than I need? All manner of created things can lure my mind from what's most important. I don't want to be tempted into wasting God's gift of hours. Sloths may be super cute – but not in human form. Slothfulness doesn't look so adorable.

Once in a while, in unexpected moments of clarity, I recognize that time isn't infinite, on earth at least. My supply is limited - it could end any second or forty years from now. Unclear. Without being legalistic about it, I think there is room for me to move more thoughtfully through my days, noticing where I am being tempted to slide into slothful habits that seem harmless but are eroding God’s best for me.

Maybe it is rude to ask others, "What did you do all day?" but one day, it's a question we all have to answer. I'm truly grateful that God is full of grace and mercy – because I know I've wasted a lot of what He gave me. Thankfully, for now, there's still more in the bank. I’ll continue to spend some of it on rest and play. But I’ll also be on the lookout for any sloth lurking in the trees of my choices, robbing me of opportunities to enjoy the deepest riches of the gift of time.