“I’ve got some free time” someone says. What do they mean? What is this “free time” of which they speak? What differentiates this “free time” from other times? If I have it and then fill it with something (a beer and a game of checkers with my neighbor) is it still “free” or is it now enslaved (to checkers, my neighbor, and the beer shared between us)?
In other words, can “free time” be spent doing things or does the spending of it make it somehow “un-free” time?
What about folks whose time is not “free” in the leisure sense but is somehow “free” in the sense of being unpressured. A craftsman, for instance, working at his own pace on a commissioned piece operates in a kind of time that is “freer” than, for instance, the hourly wage-earning time of an office worker in Tacoma.
Or, to problematize the question still more, consider the way in which the “free time” of the internet / social media “influencer” class of persons, while totally “up to them” on one level, is actually all entirely claimed, on a very deep level, and occupied by their life as a content creator? That “free day” at the pool? Recorded, edited, and posted, gaining likes and accruing ad money per click. That “vacation” to the Bahamas? Actually a work trip sponsored by the company who sent them the tickets and whose logo appears on their swimwear. None of their “free time” is free.
Okay, so what is true free time?
I’m going to offer a definition of what it actually is and not so much of what we refer to in contemporary English when we (imprecisely) call certain kinds of leisure time “free” —which, as we can maybe see from the above linguistic conundrums, is imprecise and inaccurate.
True “free time” is time in which a human inhabits life in a lordly self-composure, that is, free of shame, compulsion, dissemblance, coercion, or absence.
Jesus Christ is the perfect example of “free time.” No where do we see Jesus doing anything with a kind of slovenly, servile, self-pitying “have to.” He is obedient to the Father, he submits to the lash and the arraignment, He drinks the cup to the dregs, but all of His obedience is, somehow, startlingly “free.”
Jesus is never “bothered.” He is never occupied or preoccupied by situations. He is always radically present in them. He dwells fully in time, whether feasting or laboring, praying in solitude or ministering to the sick and the needy. He is confident that all his times are in the Father’s hands. He is the One who was born “in the fullness of time” and, as it were, in His earthly ministry He remains ever in the fullness of time. All of Jesus time is “spoken for” and “appointed” and “claimed” by others but He never seems rushed or hurried or “out of time.”
Even when His “time runs out” it does so at His lordly leisure: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Neither is his Victory a rushed thing. He sabbaths into it. After rising He does not rush to prove himself —all in “good time.” He abides in the Garden, waiting for Mary. He has “time to spare.” He shows up in the evening to the brothers —where was He this whole time? How did He spend his hours between morning and evening? Walking the road to Emmaus, disguised until the breaking of bread, “burning time.”
What is Jesus doing now? When will He return in glory? What is He waiting for? Time’s fullness, of course. He will return to judge the living and the dead “all in good time.”
“Free time” properly understood is like Jesus’s time(s). Free time is time lifted above circumstances and therefore in command of them. I can do the work I need to do or I can spend the holiday with my family as I am able, in the time God has given me because He frees my time from the compulsion of atheism —believing “time is what I make of it.”
Life lived in the love of God liberates my times, making them truly “free,” like Jesus’ times. “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses…” My bearing witness, my dwelling in the very heart of God, my joy in the Triune God, makes all my times “free” insofar as I choose not to walk bondage to the spirit of fear which would occupy my time, filling me with dread about the future of my time.
Those whose times the Son has set free are free indeed to live like the Son in God’s fullness of time.