I don’t even know what day it is.
Did that happen last week or last month?
I don’t remember the last time I left the house.

Statements like these have become commonplace since the world changed last spring. As the typical events and routines that keep people tethered to time vanished from daily life almost overnight, many found themselves feeling adrift, unproductive, and lacking purpose.

“So many of our expectations, plans, and dreams have been dashed over the last 18 months, never to be recovered,” writes Hannah Anderson.

“But what if this moment also holds a particular kind of promise? What if the forces disrupting our productivity and sense of control have also opened up an opportunity to engage our lives differently?”

Anderson points out that “Christians have not been immune to the gospel of productivity and progress.” It’s far too easy to find our value and worth in the number of tasks we accomplish in a day. But the pandemic removed that metric for many of us and offered an opportunity to recalibrate our relationship to time.

May we consider who, and Whose, we are even when our regular anchors float away. In doing so, we can, as Anderson writes, “begin to live lives marked less by what we accomplish and more by the God we follow.”