Title: The Athenian habit

By: J.O. Lawal
Date: October 21, 2026
Series: Youth for Jesus
Number: Vol. 9, No. 23

“All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there used to spend their time in nothing else than telling or listening to something new.” (Acts 17:21 NET)

Those were Luke’s words about the people living in Athens during his time, the time that he was accompanying Paul the apostle on his apostolic missions. And what do we learn from his comment about those people? It is that there is nothing new under the sun.

Solomon, in that wonderful book of his, Ecclesiastes, declares to us that there is nothing new under the sun. And by that, he is not referring to new technologies or inventions; rather, he is referring to new happenings or occurrences. Yet people have never stopped looking forward to hearing or seeing something new that is happening under the sun. (Cf. Ecclesiastes 1:9–10)

As we see in our opening text, the Athenians and the foreigners living among them during Paul and Luke’s time were always busy seeking to hear and to speak about the new things happening in their world. And that was because they failed to realize that there was nothing happening during their time that was totally strange or entirely new. Everything they were hearing and witnessing had happened before. If they had been doing their research well, they would have known that and stopped wasting valuable time, energy and resources on promoting old and stale news.

In like manner, many of us today have cultivated the Athenian habit. We daily waste much valuable time, energy and resources on seeking to hear or see something new that is happening under the sun. And there are many platforms that are aiding us in doing so. These platforms, of course, were not created by their owners to aid a waste of our time, energy and resources. On the contrary, they were created to make the handling of our lives, affairs, relationships and businesses easier for many of us.

But like the people of Athens of that time, many of us have reduced every platform given to us to a tool for wasting valuable time, energy and resources on discussing ancient issues that are wearing modern attire. What, then, are we going to gain from doing so? We will not gain anything that those who first did what we are now doing did not gain.

So, though there are many platforms through which you can be loaded with all kinds of so-called strange happenings or new revelations, choose not to use any of them to waste your time, energy or resources on anything that is not edifying. Instead, always think of how you can use every platform available to you as an opportunity to make life easier, better and more profitable for you and others in your world.

Now, indeed, some things may appear new or strange to you. That, however, does not mean that they are actually strange. You are the one who is just finding out about them. Therefore, even in dealing with such things, your focus should always be how profitable they can be to you. And if you cannot see them as profitable in any serious sense, waste no time in discarding them. And may God continually keep you from wasting your life on irrelevances or non-essentials. Amen.

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