Back in 1994, Fred Rogers noticed a subtle but significant shift stirring in the human soul. Long before push notifications and pocket-sized portals to the internet, he named a pattern forming beneath the surface of modern life. With pastoral gentleness and prophetic clarity, he offered a challenge that now reads less like nostalgia and more like a warning:

Our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise rather than silence. . . And I feel that we need a lot more wonder and a lot more silence in our lives.

Then smartphones arrived, sliding seamlessly into our pockets, our palms, and eventually into the hands of our children. What Mr. Rogers sensed as a tremor became a tidal wave.

Stillness, wonder, and silence were added to society’s endangered species list.

We are now living with the full-blown symptoms of that loss, visible across humanity and amplified across the globe. We inhabit a culture catechized by constant connection and conditioned by endless consumption. Our minds are busy but not deep; informed but not formed.

Toxic tribalism thrives in this soil, fed by immediacy rather than inquiry, by memes rather than meaning, by algorithms rather than attentive, prayerful thought. Conviction hardens without contemplation. Reaction replaces reflection. We scroll past complexity in favor of outrage, trading wisdom for winning.

Even play has been diminished. What was once imaginative, embodied, and communal has become static and digitally spoon-fed. Creativity has been replaced by virtual content. Neighborhood collaboration by curated experiences designed by someone else, somewhere else, for profit. Children are entertained but not enchanted. Busy but not becoming.

But wait. Let’s pause and look. 

We confess a God who works through ordinary, slow, and often quiet means. We believe formation happens not through frenzy but through faithfulness. God’s economy is not one of efficiency but of endurance.

Watch closely the saints of old. Where did their deepest encounters with God occur?

Elijah did not meet the Lord in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in the low whisper of silence as he sheltered in the rock while the storm passed by. Moses was formed not in the palace but in forty years of obscurity in the wilderness. Jesus fasted and wandered for forty days in desert solitude, resisting spectacle and speed. 

And on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, while the world still slept, a small group of women walked quietly toward a tomb. There was no crowd. No announcement. No fanfare. Only grief, faithfulness, and the soft light of dawn. It was there, in the hush of a garden, in the stillness of an empty grave that God unveiled the greatest act of redemption the world has ever known. 

Resurrection did not erupt in noise. It was discovered in silence.

Scripture most often reveals a God who meets people not in noise but in nearness. Not in constant stimulation, but in sustained attention.

So how might we rekindle stillness and embrace boredom?

Close the computer. Pry the phone from the palm. Peel the smartwatch from the wrist. Walk without a destination. Jog without tracking. Sit without scrolling. Become unfound by anyone except God.

Creation is not merely a backdrop. The world is thick with meaning, layered with lessons, glittered with grace. It abounds with mini-miracles awaiting our enjoyment: frost on fallen leaves, the discipline of seasons, the persistence of birdsong, the quiet companionship of trees that ask nothing of us.

But these gifts require attention. They demand limits. We must set our screens down if we hope to see what God has already set before us.

As the apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 1:20:

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Let us slow down together and dare to be bored. Out of the beauty of intentional stillness and boredom, may our eyes be opened as God designed them–to behold, to wonder, to worship. Let us rediscover the rhythms of seasons, the testimony of creation, and the quiet prompting of the Spirit.

Turn off the noise. 

Mute the memes. 

Beat back the algorithms.

Have you noticed?

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

Let’s step outside. Let’s look longer. Let’s behold God in new ways and in old spaces, trusting that in silence, God is still speaking, and in the quiet, God is still forming us.