“I don’t do boredom well,” was my answer when asked how I get everything done, between writing, working, raising boys, and leading a team at our church. The person asking and I both laughed at the response, but later I felt convicted.
Being bored makes space for creativity. When was the last time you watched a child's imagination take flight? This past Sunday, I sat behind a young boy around age 5 or 6 in a wheelchair with a cast from his foot to his mid-thigh. He had a set of plastic dinosaurs to entertain him during a thirty-minute sermon on marriage and finances that was way over his head, but he was having a blast. He’d forget that he was supposed to be quiet. The dinosaurs would attack each other and start growling. His mother would shush him, and he would quiet down for a while, until his imagination blurred the lines between reality and pretend once more.
I was struck with the overwhelming sense of how much God loved having that little boy creatively playing dinosaurs in His church. God isn’t just creative. He is our magnificent Creator. We live in a beautiful, fantastical world that He created. He loves to create, and He made us in his image and instilled His creativity in us.
It’s okay to get bored. In Isaiah 30:15 God says, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.”
I went through a phase where I felt guilty whenever I sat and took a break. With a constant looming book deadline, there is always something I should be doing. Raising three boys didn’t help either, because the moment I sat, I became a human jungle gym. Or my day would be so crammed with their activities that I’d have to schedule time to shower. The busyness stifled my creativity until I learned to carry a pad of paper and a pencil and let ideas flow as I waited in the pickup line or for sports practice to let out.
Science supports the idea that we should allow ourselves to get bored. Psychologists Sandi Mann and Rebekah Cadman from the University of Central Lancashire in the UK studied the effects of boredom by having subjects do repetitive tasks like copying pages from the phone book. Afterward, subjects were told to list things that could be done with two polystyrene cups. Those who performed the boring tasks offered more creative solutions than those who skipped the repetitive chore.
Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”
Being still and being bored aren’t the same thing, but both allow your creativity to flow. When I’m plotting a book, I’ll usually sit in my living room, stare out the window, and ask the imaginary character in my head questions about themself. My imagination takes over and a story forms.
During the times when I sit and be still before God (which I admittedly need to do more of), I ask Him questions, and often I’ll get revelations, or my mind will be moved to reflect on past situations that show how God’s hand has been moving in my life, or reminders of victories so I can relax and know He is in control and will get me through every trial. Sometimes, I just sit in awe of how God made everything to interact, like trees giving off oxygen that we breathe and us emitting carbon dioxide that trees breathe. How the Earth spins at the perfect rate so that we don’t become crushed or fly off into space. Or how miraculously our bodies are made.
With social media, videos, and podcasts ever at the ready, we can have someone else’s voice in our head to fill every minute of the day. I admit to downloading podcasts and feeling pressured to listen so I didn’t get behind as more released. But the best wisdom and creativity can be found when we quiet ourselves and allow God’s voice to uplift and inspire us.