Chilling with the Trinity at Lunch

SUMMARY: Learn how to redeem your time and feed on Scripture during your workday. Jim Valekis shares his lunch-break Bible study approach, plus a free Advent study to try.

On a regular basis, Smiling Icon provides what I call Lunch Buddy Studies: Bible studies made easily accessible on the web, and available for people to feed on while they feed on their lunches at work in the Marketplace. That’s what I used to do years ago when I was a technical writer for nuclear licensing documents in Birmingham, Alabama. It’s not as impressive as it sounds. I edited and oversaw the publication of numerous revisions to nuclear licensing documents required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission following the Three Mile Island disaster.

It was tedious and not my favorite thing to read. But it put food on the table. And helped me to raise my young family. I knew I needed to feed on God’s word on a daily basis to keep spiritually alive and potent, but I didn’t want to go home and take away time from the kids and wife to be doing involved Bible studies. So instead, I seized on the principle in Ephesians (in the King James translation) that said something to the effect of “redeem” the time, because the days were evil.

“Redeem” the time, it said.

Redeem the Time

Redeem means “buy back” (or something like that), so it occurred to me that I could “buy back” otherwise wasted snippets of time during their (driving to and from work, taking breaks during the day, etc.) and “sneak” in some Bible Study.

So I would do it during lunch, at my desk, and it was such a tremendous blessing. Much of what I know about Scripture, even today, I learned that way.

And I didn’t have to go to bed feeling spiritually hungry and unfed. I learned how to redeem the time.

I found snatches of time to help me keep my daily goal of reading the Scripture and studying it for at least 30 minutes a day (which often evolved into more).

So my day might look like this...

Morning

On the way to work, I could listen to bible tapes, stopping them for deeper reflection as I drove to my destination, winding back to the phrase that caught my attention, and basically chilling with God on my way to work while my mind was fresh and able to focus.

Traffic was often boring and aggravating anyway. It’s amazing how much more beautiful the ride to work seemed when I chit-chatted with my carpool buddy, Jesus, that way.

And how often would I see the study end at just the right stopping point as I pulled into work.

At work, I’d do my thing and edit documents about sump pumps, etc. (I can still remember thinking that I could not care less about how this sump pump worked).

We had 15-minute breaks too in the morning, so if I was still spiritually hungry I could sneak in a little more Scripture reading (they had those tiny green pocket New Testaments in those days, and you could pull them out discreetly in the break room or other quiet respite spots.

Noon 

Then at lunch, I’d heat up my leftovers in the microwave, sit down at my desk, take out my note-taking book, and devour Scripture too.

I wouldn’t just read books about the Bible that had the occasional Scripture and a lot of somebody’s commentary. I’d read the Scripture itself. I didn’t want “ABC” (Already Been Chewed) Bible study. I wanted to learn how to cut the spiritual meeting, chew on it (even when it was tough), and learn how to devour it myself.

If that didn’t fill me, and I was still hungry, I’d take advantage of tiny snippets of breaks during the day.

Evening

I’d go home spiritually fed, having earned a day's paycheck to support my family, and I was able to not only be present emotionally and spiritually for the family, but I also felt the sweet sense of spiritual satisfaction that I’d been emotionally and spiritually present for my God, who’d given all things to me!

If I had a bad day, I would hear this modified phrase from Tevye in The Fiddler on the Roof in my head: 

“Just because I had a bad day, God should suffer?” 

(He’d really said to God, “Just because you had a bad day, I should suffer?”)

Years later, when I was a pastor, many of my young trainees had day jobs too. So I created line-by-line Bible studies that they could do at lunch themselves. And I made them so they were not “ABC” studies, but studies that they could cut up and devour, line by line, wrestling with the word themselves at times they redeemed during the work day.

Do you want to give it a try? Click here to get my most recent study of Advent (it would take about a week’s worth of lunch times to do).

I’m giving you all a belated Christmas present on this blog. A study to encourage you to feed on Jesus in more ways this year.

And to bless Him and you along your way.

Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, and be blessed in every way and every day!

Find more studies at smilingicon.com