Hitting the Pause Button

Life has a way of getting away from us. How often do you think, “Wow, time flies!” as things that happened ten years ago feel like events of just the other day. We all get busy with work, family, holidays and even hobbies. So busy that life itself seems to fly by faster than we want it to.

Yet there are times in this hustle and bustle where we hit the pause button. Sometimes we are forced to hit pause – it seems that the whole world has just been forced to do so by the coronavirus. People have to stay at home rather than go to work; they cannot even spend time with friends at restaurants or attend social events. As I type this, the hustle and bustle of life has ground to a halt in many European cities and is about to do so in South Africa.

While the current global pause is unprecedented, there are many times during our lives where we either willingly or unwillingly hit the pause button. This is often at major milestones, like the birth of a new family member, the start or end of a relationship, weddings, birthdays, or even the pause between jobs. Perhaps the most sobering pause of all is when a loved one dies or comes close to death, or even if you experience a serious illness. In any case, the pause may last a few moments as you reflect on what has happened in your life during a significant event, or it may last weeks, months or years as you wait for a new job or to recover from illness.

Pleasant pauses offer brief times of reflection, as we reach a milestone in life that we have looked forward to, like a birthday or wedding. We like to take a day or at most a week or two to contemplate these events in our lives, but pretty soon we get on with business as usual. We are less impressed with long, unpleasant pauses caused by ending a relationship, losing a job, or battling with serious health issues. We spend most of the time during these pauses wishing that they would end so life could go on.

Regardless of the nature of the pause, everyone experiences them from time to time. Although we may complain that our lives seem to “fly by” and that we never really have enough time to focus on the important things, in reality we like the hustle and bustle. As long as the mind and body are busy dealing with the daily struggles of life, we can ignore the things that lurk in the back of our minds and keep us up at night. We can also bury the bigger questions of life – What am I doing with my life? What is the point of it all? Will I regret my decisions one day? What will happen when I die?

These hard questions can be buried when we’re too busy thinking about today, but they have a tendency of rising to the surface when we are forced to pause for an extended period of time. This is why we hate long pauses. Yet I believe that long pauses have this very purpose – to make us think a little more deeply about life than usual.

For anyone who is currently experiencing a pause – due to the coronavirus, or any of the other reasons mentioned above – please consider using it wisely. Although we may have little or no control over how long the pause lasts, we have full control over how we respond to it. We can spend the time pitying our state of affairs (shrinking bank balance between jobs, painful symptoms of illness, or a broken heart between relationships) or we can come face-to-face with the difficult questions of life that we usually ignore. If you don’t want to get to the end of your life filled with regret and “what ifs”, then I suggest you take this latter approach.

Gaining perspective on life is not easy, because we are not objective observers, but subjective actors. We are prone to pointing out the bad decisions made by others, while glossing over the ones we make. When we see others facing difficulties, we pity them but very rarely think that we may face similar problems one day. Yet when our bad decisions come back to bite us and the problems we thought belonged to others come home to roost in our own lives, we desperately need a better perspective.

I have found that considering someone else’s life, with the express purpose of seeing if it can teach me anything about my own life, is sometimes the best way to gain such perspective. I believe this is why the Bible is filled with true-life stories, rather than just teachings. Even the passages of teaching are given in the context of a life story. So if you are going through a pause right now, dust off the Bible and see what you can learn in the lives of others.

We find many Biblical examples of pauses in life that were used for a greater purpose. Jacob was living quite comfortably at home before a series of events (mostly by his own doing) led to him having to drop everything and flee for his life. He landed up sleeping alone in the desert with a rock for a pillow. During this pause God appeared to him for the first time in his life and promised to bless him (Gen 28:10-22). Many years later, Jacob’s son Joseph had to endure an even longer pause. He too was living comfortably at home, enjoying the status of his father’s favourite son until one day his jealous brothers caught him and sold him as a slave. He spent many years as a slave, and later even as a prisoner, in Egypt. During this pause, he matured greatly, learned to apply himself diligently in every situation, and grew in wisdom and grace. After these years of preparation, he became the second most powerful man in Egypt and was in a position to save his family from starvation (Gen. 37, 39-45).

The pauses we see in the Bible are usually put there for a reason. While it may not be pleasant at the time, the pause is often required for God to be able to speak into a life. Without pauses, these lives may have been spent frivolously and history would have little or nothing to say about them. In another example, Moses was living a fast-paced life as part of the Egyptian royal family (having been adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter) when he was forced to flee into the wilderness after killing an Egyptian. This pause in his life lasted 40 years! Finally, as a humble shepherd who had had plenty of time to consider the meaning of life, God sends him to save Israel from slavery in Egypt (Ex. 2-3).

The most powerful pauses in our lives bring us face-to-face with our own mortality. Either through serious sickness, old age, or witnessing a loved one become sick or die, we are met with the stark reality that this life does not last forever. While we all know that in theory, seeing death up close and personal shakes us up and makes us take life a whole lot more seriously.

In the book of Job, we see a man who was living a good life in every sense of the word – he was a righteous man who pleased God, but he also had a large family and plenty of assets. His life is turned upside down, however, as he experiences the loss of his children, all of his possessions, and even his health. During this time he grapples with God, always asking “Why me?” until God finally delivers an answer with a breath-taking display of His power and majesty. God gives Job perspective – he eventually realises that life isn’t all about him; it is about God.

Finally, we see a man who is forced to pause from life because of old age. As Solomon comes to the end of his time on earth, he looks back on what he has done and reflects on the lessons he has learned in the book of Ecclesiastes. It is a very sad book, because Solomon had enormous potential for good yet he squandered it and lived his own way – chasing fame, wealth, lust, and glory. He had a very busy life – filled with ruling a kingdom, building enormous and elaborate houses and the temple, marrying hundreds of women (and sleeping with hundreds more), indulging in his favourite hobbies, and generally receiving the admiration of thousands of people (1 Kings 4-11). Yet in his final book, his theme is “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (Ecc. 1:2). As old age approaches, he realises with deep shame that he had wasted most of his life. In this final pause, he concludes that anyone wanting to live a life of purpose must find God and obey Him (Ecc. 12:9-14). All else is vanity.

As the world hits the pause button because of the coronavirus outbreak, several stories of kindness and restoration have come to the fore that would have been unheard of during “business as usual” before the virus. People who previously did not care to know their neighbours are now singing and playing instruments to entertain each other during quarantine. Cities where the air pollution was so thick that people battled to breathe now have clean air for the first time in decades. Our modern society is showing greater care for the elderly than ever before. Pauses may be horribly inconvenient, but they do not necessarily need to be negative.

As we have seen from some of the life stories recounted in the Bible, life pauses are often the times when we are most likely to listen to God and learn our most important lessons. If you are going through a life pause right now, stop and consider what you can learn from it. You may find the Lord like Jacob, or grow in maturity and wisdom like Joseph, or gain valuable perspective on the meaning of life like Job. If, like Solomon, you are faced with your own mortality and are filled with regret, remember that there is still time to turn around and find that God is willing to forgive you and receive you into His family.

Hitting the pause button may be scary at first, but it can be a golden opportunity to take a step back and reassess your life, before it starts to “fly by” once more. Use the time you are given wisely.