One of the things that our modern world has most successfully removed in our day to day life is friction. We can order necessities with a tap, have food brought to our home, the shows offered to us are only the ones that the algorithm knows we will like, and any awkward spare moment in public is smoothed over by looking at a phone. Those little bumps and stumbles of once-everyday life – an awkward interaction with a stranger, not having enough cash in your wallet, having to wait for your friend in a restaurant, having to go to the bank, the post office, the pharmacy – all now totally optional, and mostly opted out of. 

This isn’t a bemoan for the Good Ole Days, I don’t think we’re all worse off for the invention of mobile check deposit, and when I have to solo parent, grocery delivery is the reason my kids get fed. But when all the friction is removed, when we take all of these things in the aggregate, we lose something tangible and important: friction.

Do you remember learning long division in school? When I was a kid, and when most of you were kids, calculators were already pretty standard school supply fare. The idea of having to learn how to laboriously and slowly do something that the device in my backpack could do instantaneously (and more accurately) was annoying to me. I remember my teachers telling me that I wouldn’t always have a calculator (ha), so it was important that I understood how to do it myself. 

What I now can see is that the process of learning to do long division was a lot more useful to me than long division ever was. The friction of forcing my brain to think in orderly, sequential steps through a problem it didn’t understand was valuable, even if my teachers were wrong about the “calculator in my pocket” thing. 

Daily friction is the “taking the stairs” of the brain, it’s the maintenance level challenge and surprise that helps us stay sharp. Unexpected people, conversations, places, having to get to a new place without a GPS (my nightmare), working with our hands, trying a new recipe, these are the little acts of friction that keep a spark of curiosity and learning alive in us. We should be careful what we lose when we smooth them out. 

For us as Christian leaders, we could call this friction sanctifying, we could call it little movements of the Holy Spirit. This friction is the sand that polishes us, it is the little gaps we are opening for the Holy Spirit to guide us one way or another. When our experiences become too smooth, too predictable, we miss out on the wild, inconvenient, interruptions of the Holy Spirit. We all know what a chance encounter with a stranger, a book left in a bus seat, a moment of radical kindness in an unexpected place can do for our souls, and yet, we eliminate all the spaces where those moments can happen. 

There are many experiences of modern living that are a full blessing, I will probably never deposit checks in a bank again, and being able to get overnight deliveries of diapers, baby medicine, and replacement Ms. Rachel dolls has been a lifesaver as a parent. But when we are creatively stuck, when we are feeling disconnected from God’s work, from the world around us, when the color seems to be draining a little from our work, I wonder if a little more friction could be the answer. 

This week, if that feels like you, look for a little friction – a thing you can fix by hand, a new food you can cook, an errand you can do in person. Walk when you can, don’t bring your headphones, and trust that God is still moving in our magical, blooming, ever-transforming world, we just have to be inconvenienced enough to notice.