My husband and I settled into our beach chairs, soaking up the sunshine while keeping a close eye on our kids splashing in the surf. The waves rolled in, sending squeals of delight into the air, enveloping us in a short-lived sense of well-being. Nothing looked unusual until a lifeguard sprinted past me, torpedo buoy in hand, headed straight for my son. Cole looked unalarmed, bobbing along just beyond the break, but the lifeguard recognized a danger we couldn’t see: a rip current, steadily pulling him away from the shore.

Rip currents work that way—often in calm waters, when you think you’re safe, they stealthily pull you hundreds of feet offshore in a matter of minutes. I find a similar kind of current often at work in my leisure hours. Have you ever felt this drift in how you spend your downtime? At first, surfing on your phone feels like a day at the beach—the way you want to unwind and relax. You might tell yourself that you’ll attend to the more serious matters of the heart later—like reading your Bible, praying, or studying—but first you want to check a few things and read a few articles. Before you know it, you’ve been caught in a digital rip tide that’s dragged you away, making it challenging to paddle back in. 

While we’re entertained by funny videos, latest trends, and the news, too much infotainment leaves us feeling restless, not restful. The problem is that we enjoy the little hits of dopamine our phones provide, while the algorithmic undertow sucks us in with a constant diet of both trivial and critical content. The system is designed to capture our attention and affection, but by the time we  put the phone away, we often feel more anxious, unsatisfied, and disgusted. This hollow form of leisure promises one thing but delivers another, leaving us to wonder if there’s a better, more satisfying way to find the rest our hearts long for. 

Restless Hearts and Overactive Thumbs

Our addiction to technology may be a modern phenomenon, but the heart issue behind our overactive thumbs is a timeless one. Augustine famously wrote of our longing for rest and fulfillment when he said, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you” (The Confessions, 39). This restless heart syndrome is universal, an innate part of our humanity. We all know the feeling—the twitchy reach for our phones as we search for something more. In his book, You Are What You Love, James K.A. Smith writes, “To be human is to be on the move, pursuing something, going after something. We are like existential sharks: we have to move to live” (10).

The question then becomes, what are you pursuing? What is that thing you’re looking for as you swim endlessly around the waters of Instagram or Facebook? Often, we don’t know. We show up out of habit, looking for something to entertain, inform, or occupy us for a few minutes while we wait for something else. This place of striving and looking for purpose is what ancient philosophers called telos. 

A Vision of the Good Life

Telos is what we think or believe is the “good life.” It’s a picture of what we’ve imagined as true happiness and where we believe satisfaction will be found. Telos isn’t just what we think; it’s what we want and what we’re moving toward, whether we realize it or not. And what moves us toward that telos isn’t reason alone but love—the deep current that shapes our lives. 

We can’t not love, but the problem is our loves are easily misdirected toward things that promise rest but can’t deliver. That’s why hollow leisure is so seductive—it appeals not to our intellect but to our affections. Social media and other empty forms of leisure give the illusion of telos, offering versions of belonging, purpose, and rest, but these can’t bear the weight of the soul’s true purpose (Col. 1:16; Ps. 62:1). Instead of satisfying us, they numb the ache of our restless hearts for a few moments. Telos, then, isn’t simply what we believe—it’s what we love. And what we love inevitably shapes what we give our attention to, pursue, and become.

Paul affirms this idea in his prayer for the Philippians as he prayed that their love would abound more and more, approving what was excellent, and remaining pure and blameless for the day of Christ (Phil. 1:9–10). He prays that their love would inform their minds, which would inform their actions. Rightly ordered love leads to rightly ordered thinking and living. When our loves are absorbed with earthly things, they drag us downward, but when our love is set on Christ, we’re lifted upward by the Spirit. 

From Hollow Leisure to Holy Leisure

But, we don’t have to settle for the undertow that sweeps us away by hollow loves. To pull us out from the rip current of hollow leisure and reorient our hearts to something better, antiquity offers a counter-telos—a different version of the good life: otium sanctum or holy leisure. 

In The City of God, Augustine wrote, “The love of truth seeks holy leisure, but the urgency of love undertakes the work that is due” (631). In other words, holy leisure isn’t doing nothing, but it’s a holy working, a holy pursuit of ordering our affections rightly. As Christians, our love for Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), naturally leads us to desire more time with him. Holy leisure, then, is knowing and enjoying Jesus Christ in the places where he promises to meet with us: in his Word and prayer (John 15:4–5, Matt. 6:6, Ps. 27:4). It’s there we find the ultimate telos of fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Ps. 16:11). This is a foretaste of our eternal holy leisure.

How do we train our hearts to desire holy leisure over hollow leisure in the here and now? How can we pull away from short-lived gratification to pursue the one thing that Jesus says won’t be taken away (Luke 10:42)? Our loves don’t change overnight, and we feel the tension between what we know we should do (spend time in the Word) and what we want to do (surf on our phones). We don’t reorder our affections with more information (something hollow leisure provides in abundance), but repeated formation—the regular and quiet rhythms of meeting with God. 

To pursue holy leisure is to change how we think about how we approach God’s Word and our quiet times. It’s the opposite of a check box mentality that does its duty and leaves the Word unchanged. Instead, the pursuit of holy leisure approaches God’s Word as a time of rest, with a heart posture that savors Christ and finds him beautiful, true, and good. When you feel the pull of distraction or escape, pray for God’s help to reach for something better—time in the Word and prayer.  

Over time, this pursuit produces the fruit Paul prayed for the Philippians: transformed hearts, renewed thinking, and changed actions. The allure and drift of hollow leisure eventually lose their grip while new affections are born, and the good life is found. So, if you’ve been carried out to sea by the currents of hollow leisure, don’t stay adrift. The good news is we don’t rescue ourselves from the current; Christ does. He’s the lifeline, the shore, and the rest your soul’s been searching for.