Snow Days
Anti-Social Century, New Rules, [Don't] Do More, and Ruining Dinner
Welcome back gang.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas, enjoyed a thrilling New Year’s, and have been able to settle into some sort of rhythm on the other side of all the celebration that comes with the holidays.
The new year tends to be a time to reflect on the year behind us, and look ahead to what’s coming. While much of what’s coming is inevitable (the calendar rolling along, kids going back to school, and deadlines for projects), there’s still room for what’s aspirational about the new year. We set goals to read more, start working out, declutter our homes, start journaling or praying consistently, or spend more time with friends and family. Searching for balance, margin, and growth is a good thing, though that quest can often cause more anxiety and frustration than we bargain for.
In Louisville, we’ve been in the middle of a snowstorm all week, so all my plans for the new year have been put on hold. Instead of carving out time after carpool to read quietly, or jot down pieces of gratitude, I’ve been serving as a short order cook to kids, refereeing wrestling matches after Roblox meltdowns, busting up sheets of ice so we can mercifully get out of this house, and inventing ways to get a dog to pee outside in a foot of snow. This wasn’t on my dream board for 2025!
Having said all that, having this extra week of “Christmas vacation” has actually been a delight. God’s given us another week to spend time together doing all sorts of things we don’t normally get to do. We ate a ton of lunches and dinners together instead of rushing out the door to get to swim, or hoops, or whatever. I spent time with neighbors helping to shovel driveways so folks could get to work. I shared a bundled up drink across the fence with a buddy as snow fell around us and our kids tossed snowballs around the yard. We kept the Christmas tree up for another week because it just felt wrong to take it down while there was still snow on the ground.
None of these things were on my priority list to kick off the new year, and it would be easy to get discouraged by the progress I didn’t make on my goals for the new year. But God used them to remind me of the value of slowing down, savoring small moments, deepening relationships, and celebrating a little longer than we’re used to. All good things! It’s almost like God knows more about what I need than I do. Crazy huh?
So while we’re more than a week into 2025, this week I’m hitting you with a few articles you can use to shape the year in front of you. No one’s asking you to solve all your problems in the next twelve months, but we’ve all got a step to take toward where God’s calling us. So as you read, plan, scheme, and schedule, do it all with an eye toward what the Lord might do both in you and through you this year. And hold whatever you come up with in open hands, willing to let it go if God puts something else in front of you. Our best laid plans may fail, but his never will. That’s good news for us as we follow him in this year and beyond.
Anti-Social Century (Discipleship/Development)
“For decades, we’ve adopted whatever technologies removed friction or increased dopamine, embracing what makes life feel easy and good in the moment. But dopamine is a chemical, not a virtue. And what’s easy is not always what’s best for us.” You’re going to want to grab a cup of coffee for this one, and make it a big one. Derek Thompson talks to experts across a number of fields to make his case for why we’ve found ourselves in the current anti-social century. Not only that, but he unpacks how this move toward being anti-social is affecting everything, including family life, politics, work, leisure, rest, and our own well-being.
If you’re doing any sort of pastoral work, spend time building teams, find yourself parenting kids, or managing relationships of any kind, this piece is a goldmine for you to consider. Equal parts depressing factoids (for starters: “Men who watch television now spend 7 hours in front of the TV for every 1 hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home.”) and hopeful reflections on how small changes personally and culturally can move us in a different direction, his works covers it all. This is 100% worth your time, and you can even listen to the article on the go via a link at the top of the page. While he’s not coming at the problem (or solutions) from a gospel-perspective, I’ve found this piece (and most of his other work) thought provoking and helpful.
New Rules (Discipleship)
“My experience as a pastor has shown me that many of my friends and church members aren’t undone by poor theology or a lack of biblical information. Instead, we often fail to grow spiritually because we haven’t planned and made space for a deep, abiding fellowship with God.” ‘Tis the season for new goals. I usually re-read this piece from my old pal, Jeremy Linneman, every year. It’s a great framework you can use to prioritize intentional spiritual growth without it feeling like an anvil that’s keeping you tied down. Justin Taylor shared an editable spreadsheet on his Twitter feed that you can use to think through and organize commitments in areas across your life (spirituality, relationships, finances, family, etc.). There’s no shortage of ways to put something like this together, but I find the simplicity of Jeremy’s system make it easy to engage with initially and actually follow through with.
[Don’t] Do More (Discipleship)
“We have to go faster just to stay even. Each new technology promises to make life easier, more manageable, to extend your control. In reality what the new tech does, so far as I can tell, is create the expectation that you accomplish more but in the same amount of time as you had before.” Anthony Robinson invites us to consider our finitude in the new year. Instead of chasing the inevitable yearly reset and the quest for more productivity, increased efficiency, and unending acceleration, he calls us to the practice of embracing our limits. We’re not God after all. Our bodies have limited energy, our days limited hours, and our brains limited bandwidth. We can’t do it all, no matter how hard we try. Robinson encourages us to remind ourselves of our own limitations so that we can enjoy what God’s called us to do in our families, our jobs, and our churches. When we embrace the humanity God’s given us, we can rest knowing that the gifts of both our humanity and finitude come from him.
Ruining Dinner
Our kids have been out of school all week thanks to Snowmageddon 2025, and it’s really thrown off everyone’s schedules. They stay up late, wake up early, eat breakfast for lunch, and on and on it goes. So while I’m cooking dinner, I wander upstairs to find my daughter destroying a bowl of cheese-its and nutella. Bizarre flavor combo aside, I didn’t love what that meant for the chances of her actually eating the food I’d spent an hour cooking. All that to say, this reel hit home in an infuriating way the next morning.