Post Script | October 2, 2023

What good can be done in twenty minutes?

Can I write this letter to you in 20 minutes?

I’m going to try. (Starting my timer now.)

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I had the idea for thinking about all we might do with twenty minutes of our lives. In In Good Time, I did mention a small little fit I had about a sermon I heard where the preacher pleaded with congregants to try giving God five minutes of their lives. On the one hand, five minutes is better than nothing. On the other, five minutes? I bet we’re giving our morning routine a lot more than five minutes.

But what about twenty minutes? What might be done with twenty minutes of our lives? I’ve recently been procrastinating on some projects, and last week, I finally put on my to-do list that I would give twenty minutes to these projects. Mostly, they represent the kind of project that no one is expecting from me, the kind of creative work without firm deadline. It’s the kind of work that falls into the “important, not urgent” category. And guess what? Without attending the small obedience of twenty minutes, entire weeks and months slip away because the urgent tasks have a megaphone; they growl with the loudest voice.

What if I could give twenty minutes to reading about the Puritans? What if I could give twenty minutes to drafting words for a potential next book project?

In the pandemic, I remember I finally got through a difficult theology book by giving it twenty minutes a day. Laura Fabrycky had—years earlier—lent me her copy of The Gravity of Sin by Matt Jenson, and it sat there, staring at me from a shelf. I told myself I would get to it. . . when I had sufficient time to devote. I would get to it. . . when other deadlines had given way and I could clear some space for it.

I don’t know what got into me exactly when the world shut down. Maybe it was that I was reading a lot about Saint Benedict, getting a feel for the very routine and regular work they engaged in the everyday life of the monastery. Nothing ambitious was set down in Benedict’s rule. Nothing cosmic or life-changing. There were hours dedicated to prayer, to manual labor, to meals, to corporate worship, to study. And yes, we’re talking hours, not increments of twenty minutes, but the humility present in the rule is the humility present in twenty minutes. There’s a sense in which the faithfulness these monks engaged, aspired to, was of the incremental kind, not the once-and-done.

(I read Jenson’s book every day for twenty minutes—and finished it in a little more than a month.)

Thinking of this kind of faithfulness, several days last week, I gave myself to reading Worldly Saints for twenty minutes. I opened a file for what might become some work for the next book project and started a very simple list: What I Know about ______________. When I had twenty minutes in the car one day, I finally called my aunt who is in ill-health. She was elated, and it was such an easy gesture. With twenty minutes (and more), I talked to my older children on the phone in Canada. With twenty minutes, Ryan and I did a little bit of family calendaring, talking about the rest of the year. In twenty minutes on Friday, I had the mess on my desk cleared, making space for the different work of the weekend.

The point is that we—or speaking only for myself, I—often put off the tasks to which God calls me because I imagine them bigger (and scarier) and more daunting than they are. But what if faithfulness could look like twenty minutes today and tomorrow and ten years running?

When I was a new Christian, I remember being encouraged to read my Bible for 10 minutes a day, pray for 5. Fifteen minutes of spiritual practice! That was it. It didn’t take long for that time to grow. Now I don’t need to be begged to spend twenty minutes with God these days because it is a source of near-constant delight.

Maybe twenty minutes is a place to start, with God and every other area of life. More than five—and less than an hour. I wonder what we all might be able to give twenty minutes to? To our transformation, to engaging the Bible, to prayer, to friendship, to marriage, to a neighbor, to the care of our places, to learning, to physical health, to spiritual practices in our families, to rest, to play?

Twenty minutes got me 750 words. (Twenty minutes didn’t get me hyperlinks and a quick spellcheck, but that’s ok. I think you’ll forgive.)

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If you’re interested in the intentional practices involved in twenty-minute faithfulness, consider my November 4th Rule of Life workshop. Learn more here. 2024 dates coming soon!