Wasted

Consider the following excerpt from a New York Times article that was composed on July 8, 2008:

The average American spent 127 hours of time with TV in May, up from 121 hours in May 2007; and 26 hours on the Internet, up from 24 hours last year. More than 282 million people watch television in a given month and nearly 162 million use the Internet.

This tells us that the average American spends 4.1 hours a day in front of the television, while over 1 hour per day is spent surfing the internet--a total of 5.1 hours spent staring into a box on a daily basis. Let's throw in a few more numbers to make this even more interesting. If the average American sleeps 8 hours per day and works 8 hours per day, 2.9 hours are left over for meals. If you factor in 1.5 hours for the meals, the average American is left with 1.4 hours a day for activities such as prayer, reading, exercise, family time, and face-to-face social interaction.

We wonder why our marriages are suffering. We wonder what happened to our neighborhood front porch culture. We miss Mayberry. And we, as the American church, wonder why we are not seeing more sinners saved. Where is the joy of our salvation?

Could it be that we are wasting our lives on empty distractions? You can discover a lot about a man by observing how his time is spent. The fact of the matter is that we spend more time fixated upon a box in a zombie-like state than we do pressing into the presence of God and advancing His Kingdom. We have no excuse. We need to change.