Stop Wasting My Time

I hate wasting my time on things I don't enjoy. I never have enough time to do everything I want to do, so anymore I have no patience for spending hours at an activity that is boring or isn't stimulating, intellectually or spiritually, etc. (Ironically my job applies to this category, except that it gives me money and that is important).

For instance, FHE. The activity is SUPPOSED to be a get to know you activity so why not do something . . . revolving around the scriptures. After all we don’t get enough religion living in Provo, UT. Devotionals, ward prayer, firesides, 3 hours of church, an hour of visiting teaching, an hour of home teaching, enrichment activities, and then FHE, where the first ½ hour is supposed to be a lesson, which I am fine with. But I draw the line at making the activity also, ALWAYS, about the scriptures. Perhaps I am a bad person and I should make religion a part of every aspect of my life. Perhaps I should be eating, breathing, dreaming, writing, drawing, watching, walking, sitting, washing religion. After all, my faith is very important to me; shouldn’t it pervade every breath of my life? But let’s be honest. Do we all find the scriptures so exciting that we want to be reading them all the time?

And the scriptures, religion in general, is meant to show you how to live your life. They are basically instructions. A user’s manual. But if you spend more time reading the instructions and not doing any practical application then the instructions are useless. You are spending all your time planning your life and never actually living your life. You are gaining nothing.

I feel that way about many of the activities I am semi-forced to participate in. There is no real enrichment from them. FHE activities: 1. Let’s get to know one another. Here is a pile of pieces of papers with scripture names written on them. Grab one, don’t look at it, but put it facing out pressed to your forehead so everyone else can look at it. Go around to people and ask them one question about themselves and then ask 3 yes or no questions about the person you are. YAY! I scream sarcastically. What name do I get on my forehead: Nebuchadnezzar. What in the world? The activity did not allow much getting to know you. The focus was on the scripture name, not the people. 2nd activity: Book of Mormon Golf! Randomly open the scriptures, read out a chapter heading and everyone has to write down the book and chapter they think it is in. How is that helpful? It is like we are always focusing on the facts, the dates, the names, and yet we spend no time on the actual meanings behind the scriptures. We keep reading the manual, the instructions, but we never use what is in there, not in these activities. And reading the chapter headings? It is like reading the description on the back of a book.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t read the scriptures. Reading the scriptures gives you many examples of how to live your life and each time you read them you can get something different and applicable to that moment in your life. However, I am the type of reader that reads and gets meaning, but I do not have the kind of memory to remember which chapter that message came from, which prophet or follower said what, to me it doesn’t matter who said it, the messages all come from God. It doesn’t matter which vessel he uses. I guess my brain works differently. I just don’t want to spend an hour trying to prove who remembers the most about where each thing happened in the scriptures.