Dear steward,
Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out the newsletter survey I sent last week!
I’m going to be making tweaks to the newsletter in the coming weeks based on some of your suggestions. If you didn’t get a chance to fill out the 5-minute survey, you can still do so here. Much appreciated!
Cosmic Significance Therapy
Eight years ago today I had my first class at The Master’s Seminary. Even though I was nearly 30, my wife insisted on taking a first day of school picture, “like parents do with their preschoolers!”
That is why this goofy picture showed up in my Apple Photos memories this morning.
Moving across the country for school was a significant life experience. It altered the direction of my life considerably (we spent 7 years in California and I got to work side-by-side with some of my spiritual heroes).
But it sure doesn’t feel like it started nearly a decade ago.
It’s funny how when we look back on significant moments in our lives they all kind of compress together. Graduations, marriages, births, vacations—they can seem so recent in our memories until we start doing the math. That was 20 years ago!? The next thought follows inexorably:
Life is short.
And thinking about how short life our lives are can leave us feeling pretty insignificant.
Cosmic Insignificance Therapy
In his book, Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman actually encourages readers to purposely embrace that sense of meaningless. Referring to Richard Holloway’s term for it, “cosmic insignificance therapy,” a process of taking solace in the fact that compared to eternity and the size of the universe your little life with all its problems and anxieties is “indistinguishable from nothing at all.”
Now, call me crazy, but I don’t find a whole lot of comfort in meaninglessness.
It is certainly true that our lives are barely a blip on the radar, especially when compared to the God for whom a thousand years “are but as yesterday when it is past.” (Psalm 90:4). Indeed the Scriptures call our lives but a vapor (James 4:14).
So it can be easy to start thinking that the brevity of life makes our time here, and particularly our work here, unimportant. Even futile. Why build, make, and toil if it’s all to be washed away by the sands of time anyway? This was Solomon’s vexation in Ecclesiastes. If I’m going to die anyway, what’s the point of all this hard work?
It’s all a little depressing, frankly.
Eternal Significance
Well, I’ve been preparing a sermon on Psalm 90 this week and one thing that struck me was how much the topic of work features in this great song of Moses. This is the Psalm with that memorable verse, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (12). That verse comes after Moses had reflected on the eternality of God and the comparable brevity of man’s life in this world.
But Moses doesn’t treat the shortness of our lives as a reason to consider our work pointless. Far from it.
What’s really interesting about this Psalm is that it ends with this final plea “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” For Moses, the aim of considering the brevity of life isn’t hopelessness, but a proper outlook—an eternal perspective. And this perspective shapes how we live and work today.
Most of what we do in this life will not stand the test of time, the buildings will crumble, the spreadsheets will be deleted, and the laundry will get dirty again. But work done in faith, for the glory of God is as durable as gold, silver, and precious stones. It will last forever, even beyond whatever temporal result it generated.
Work done as worship isn’t futile, it’s invincible.
And that should give us hope. The seemingly insignificant things you do today matter eternally if done in faith.
So here’s the question: Are you working for the glory of God today?
Are you praying that God would establish the work of your hands, that you might “bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (John 15:16)?
Call it cosmic significance therapy.
(A shareable version of this article can be found here.)
🧑💻The Roundup
Is Motherhood Real Work? (6 mins)
“When does a new mom go back to work? She never stopped. People will still ask, but by God’s grace she will see motherhood as a job as old as work itself. What is more, she will believe that a mother’s labor matters, eternally so.”
(Tanner Swanson / Desiring God)
The 30 second habit with a lifelong impact (5 mins)
“Immediately after every lecture, meeting, or any significant experience, take 30 seconds — no more, no less — to write down the most important points. If you always do just this, said his grandfather, and even if you only do this, with no other revision, you will be okay.”
(Robyn Scott / The Startup)
How Should a Single Woman Manage Her Time? (4 mins)
Good advice on time management for any Christian really:
- Consider all God has called you to do and be.
- Prioritize what you can most uniquely do.
- Acknowledge that every yes is a no.
- Seek balance over the long arc.
- Welcome wise counsel.
- Don’t labor as though it’s all up to you.
(Kaitlin Miller / The Gospel Coalition)
Would You Pay $40 a Month to Have Strangers Watch You Work? (6 mins)
One of the downsides of work-from-home is the lack of accountability. Some people are paying for the accountability they are missing from a traditional office. This is an interesting piece on digital co-working platforms.
“These tools can also be useful for people who do not work in a traditional office environment each day. Chad Brooks, a 43-year-old pastor in Alexandria, La., has spent up to 12 hours a week on Caveday. “Sermon preparation is just deep work,” said Mr. Brooks, who also coaches other pastors and hosts a podcast.”
(Author / The New York Times)
Alfred 5 Brings a Bunch of Workflow Improvements to Boost Your Productivity (3 mins)
I’ve been using the Alfred app launcher on my Mac computers for years to do everything from launching apps to file management to running scripts that do things like insert Bible passages based on a reference or calculate the read time of an article I’m including in this newsletter. And version 5 just got even more powerful. This is a great explanation of some of the new features they’ve added to this Mac power user productivity tool.
(Mike Schmitz / The Sweet Setup)
✨ New from Me
▶️ 4 Settings to Make Your iPhone Less Distracting (7 mins)
If you spend too much time on your iPhone, these settings can help you make the phone more boring and less distracting.
🎙Should Christians Play Video Games? (With Patrick Miller) (53 mins)
Ask ten Christians what they think about video games, and you’re likely to get ten opinions. This episode is a discussion between me and Patrick Miller about how Christians should think about the place of video games in their lives. As you’ll hear, we don’t always agree, but hopefully, the conversation gets you thinking.
FYI, I also wrote a book on this topic. You can read a free sample chapter of A Student’s Guide to Gaming or buy the book here.
🖋Quote of the Week
“It may feel little. But God’s kingdom is unsmashable, and it has an embassy in your neighborhood that we call the church.”
– Alistair Begg
Resurfaced with Readwise.
🤠 Pardners*
- Protect your soul with screen accountability software. Try Covenant Eyes free for 30-days with promo code “ROSE”
- Redeem your commute by listening to audiobooks from Audible. Listen free for one month.
- I use Freedom every day to block distracting apps and websites across all my devices so I can get more done.
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⌛️That’s all for this Week
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I’ll see you next time!
– Reagan
