A major aspect of the Greensboro Fellows that excited me most was living with a host-family. I am the fifth of six kids, and I definitely had my share of a busy household. However, being the second youngest came with watching my siblings move out of the house, all the way up until this past year when I moved back home after college and found myself an only child. My routine was: go to work, go to the gym, make dinner, sometimes go to church, maybe watch a show or read and book, and get ready to go to bed. While this routine became comforting because it was familiar, I was missing out on a gift of life that I believe exemplifies God’s faithfulness to us… play.
Every day when I come home from my fellows job placement I am greeted with six big hugs and various mispronunciations of my name as the kids, ages two to eleven, in my host family welcome me home. I have spent many after-work evenings jumping on the trampoline, playing “barista” with my two-year old host brother, or making jewelry with my host-sisters, to name a few.
A few weeks ago, our church had the annual Harvest Festival, and it was a great example of play. The church was packed full of people, food, yard games, bounce houses, and of course a great dance-floor playlist. With only being a fellow for a little under two months, I did not know everyone’s names, I did not know everyone's stories, and I definitely did not know what was going on in their lives currently. And yet, we all danced, we all played, we all laughed. By carving out this time to simply be together and celebrate who God is, we were embracing the theology of play. Through play, we produce joy, a fruit of the spirit that transcends all circumstances. Through play, we experience a foretaste of the fullness of the Kingdom of God, where we will not be held by labor pressures and social structure.
Play is not productive. Play is not advancing us in our career, play is not earning us more money, and play is not improving our social status. When we stop our work and choose to play, we are expressing trust in the God who is faithful to hold all our other qualms and questions in his hands. When we choose to play, we are yielding to the one whose “yoke is easy and burden is light.” I won’t pretend this is not challenging. When we do not know how our fractured relationship with someone will be repaired, can we choose to play? When we do not know what comes after fellows year, can we choose to play? I hope to embrace this challenge, knowing that play is a part of God’s design for human flourishing, even when it is hard.
With love,
Katerina Landon