Awakening in Boredom, Emptying with Grace

We are truly filling our minds with many things these days. It’s caused people to study boredom, allowing our minds to go blank and just to stare into space. Turns out, when we grow bored, when we do nothing, our brains go into a heightened experience of exploration. We make connections, come up with solutions, and create new ways of doing things… out of being bored. That is, when we allow ourselves to just be unfocused, when we allow our minds to relax, they actually begin moving.

          Now, I’m a person who always has something on their mind. I’m not sure why, but the experience people have when someone asks, “What are you thinking about?” to which the other person says, “Nothing,” I’ve never known. I can always tell you what I’m thinking about, and I’m always thinking of something.

          So, the idea of becoming bored might seem something foreign to me. Yet, I wonder if it is my natural state… simply being open and exploratory, in some manner… the way I’m made. Whatever it means for me, it draws my attention to this truth about Jesus. In Philippians 2:7 we read…[Jesus] made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

          That phrase, “he made himself nothing,” comes from the Greek word kenosis, meaning “emptying.” Jesus emptied himself. Some interpreters suggest this points us toward a way of listening and caring: to set aside our own thoughts, assumptions, and agendas so that we can give undivided attention to another person. In this view, emptiness becomes the posture of love.

Yet I find myself seeing it differently. To me, true attention is not about erasing who I am, but about bringing the fullness of who I am into service of the other. Jesus did not abandon his divinity; he brought it fully into human life, but in the form of a servant. His “emptying” was not a loss of substance, but a willingness to appear ordinary, to meet us as one of us. In that humility, people discovered their worth in God’s eyes.

So, when I listen, I do not try to become blank. I bring my experiences, insights, and understanding—but I hold them lightly, offering them in service rather than control. In that way, I believe we follow Jesus’ path: not by vanishing ourselves, but by letting our fullness become a gift that affirms the value of the person before us.

The next time you have the chance to express your care to someone, I encourage you to be yourself, to listen fully as you are, but looking them in the eye, listening attentively and resisting the urge to offer solutions. Learn the person who is in front of you, seeking out how they might need to feel God’s love. Listen in such a way that they awaken to the worth God already sees in them.

Blessings,

Geoff