Lockdown: How to Spend Your Time Meaningfully at Home During This Insane Period

Lockdown. Circuit Breaker. Movement Control Order. These are some words that have been used by different governments around the world to describe the measures taken to keep their citizens at home. The purpose is to reduce the transmission of the Covid-19. Most people’s lives are now disrupted considering that the lockdown essentially keeps them at home. They can’t gather in church anymore, for Christians. And they can’t go anywhere. Most of them are pretty stuck. Some may even be going insane just by staying at home!

But my viewpoint is that there is no need to remain stagnant during this period. There are at least 4 things that Christians can do to spend our time meaningfully at home during this lockdown.

Study Your Bible During The Lockdown

One of the most important activities that a Christian can engage is to study your Bible. When I say studying your Bible, I do not mean just reading it for devotional purposes. Instead, even during normal times, we need to watch our doctrines and meditate and study the Words so that we know exactly what God has spoken in His revelations. I have previously spoken about reasons to study the Bible and these continue to apply even during your lockdown period.

There are resources that we can refer to deepen our understanding of the Scripture. If you are the academic type (or read theological journals for recreation), I have compiled a list of theological resources we can refer to for our own studies. But there are other websites that we can kickstart too. One of those that I have listed and I want to highlight here is the Bible Project. They have done a good job in condensing the main points of the Bible into videos that can be watched within half an hour. Furthermore, they are doing videos that explore biblical themes and even how to read the Bible.

If there is one place that one should start, the Bible Project is the place.

Spend More Quality Time with Your Kids

For parents, most of our waking hours are spent at work. The amount of time we spend with our kids is probably that few hours after work before the kids sleep, with more time spent during weekends. With a lockdown, we practically spend more time at home.

And catch this: we are the model of Christ at home for our kids.

This means that during a lockdown, our kids get to observe us at a higher intensity than usual. Already, during normal times, we need to be intentional in spending time with our kids. What more for a lockdown, when we are “trapped” with them?

And this is really a golden period where we can spend time with them, be present for them and take the relationship further and deeper.

Train up Your Physical Body

It is hard at normal times to exercise. And at normal times, we have more options. Gyms are open. Parks are available. But now we are stuck at home.

And yet, I think this is a good time, since we don’t need to travel to places. Different people are doing videos to teach us how to exercise at home without much equipments.

And training our physical body is a crucial part of our Christian spiritual formation, which we can define as “an interactive process by which God the Father fashions believers into the image of his Son, Jesus, through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit by fostering development in seven primary life dimensions,” of which physical health formation is considered the life dimension which sustains the other six.

Theologically speaking, the human physical body is an intrinsic part of human existence. As the Father’s creation, it has its value as part of the image of God, which is in turn affirmed by the incarnation of Jesus whose work provided the means to restore the lost image as a result of sin. In Christ, the physical body further finds its significance as the temple of the Holy Spirit. As a result, it establishes that if the Christian is to live a holistic life in Christ, his spirituality and spiritual formation cannot simply be a spirituality that only focuses on the interior life but instead it should allow the physical body to play a significant role. 

So, if we have the time at home, all the more we can consider training up our own body using the simple exercises, or just doing high intensity workout.

Upgrade Your Skills

The Singapore government has a strategy to get the economy to get ready for the day when the world recovers from the whole pandemic. One of the tenets is for Singaporeans to upgrade your skills. Indeed, during this lockdown period, when we might not have much work to do, this is a good time for us to explore our interests or see what skills we can grow in that will further our own career.

I have spoken much about it in an earlier post as well.

Reach out to Fringe Members in Church

Lastly, I realise that if we are serving actively in church, this is also a good time for us to reach out to members who may not have had time to connect with us before the lockdown. After all, before lockdown, they may have other commitments that render them busy to attend church gatherings and fellowships. However, during lockdown, most of us are stuck at home and have nowhere to go, it is easier for us to reach out to one another over the online platforms such as Zoom or Lark.

And I do find that in my experience, these members do want to connect back. So this is the time of golden opportunity for us to really disciple this group well so that they can be re-connected back to the church.

So what are the other ways you think we can spend our time meaningfully at home while we are in lockdown? Share with me at the comments below. I would love to hear from you.