We are sitting at lunch at TGI Friday’s, a lunch we have been looking forward to for a while, our little treat and a little taste of home on our off day, excited to sit down and to eat a meal together at the same table with plenty of space for everyone, to just get to relax and enjoy each other’s company and have full bellies and be merry and have silly life giving conversations and just laugh together. Or so I thought. And then we found out that the restaurant had wifi. And everything changed. Instead of the giggles and chats and fun I had envisioned would accompany our meal, I got blank stares at bright screens and fast moving fingers and only half listening and little comments about what was going on on our news feeds.
And that’s when it hit me. How much of our time do we spend staring at screens instead of really living life in the here and now? It’s crazy how you can spend hours staring at a screen-your phone, your laptop, your iPad, your tablet, your TV, you name it-and forget that life is still happening all around you. It’s like you get stuck in this little virtual world, just you and the screen, and when your finally look up, things look a little different than they did when you first looked down, but you didn’t even notice because you were too busy paying attention to whatever was happening in your little virtual world to realize that your very real world was still going on without you. It’s also crazy how screens-social media, snap chat, text messages, emails, games, videos, TV shows, movies-have the ability to just suck us in. It always starts out as, “I’ll just check my notifications” or “I’ll only reply to this one comment” or “I’ll just look up this one thing real fast” or “I’ll just text this one person back” or “I’ll just read this one email” or “I’ll only watch this episode.” And then it all too quickly turns into things like, “Okay, okay, I’ll just scroll through my feed for 30 minutes so that I can get caught up with what I’ve missed while I was away, then I’ll get off” or “Okay, fine, just one more episode and then I’ll turn it off” or “Alright, I’ll just respond to one more email and then I’ll shut my computer.” And somehow what was intended to be just a quick little thing turns into hours and hours of idly staring at a screen and for what? What gain do we get from living our behind a screen? Is spending your very limited number of days that you’ve been given here on this earth staring at some sort of screen really the best that this life has to offer?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that our things that have screen in and of themselves are bad. They’re actually pretty awesome. And they can be used for some good things-communicating with family and friends, sharing stories and how you’ve seen God on the move in your life, staying up to date on what’s going in the world around you, getting to connect and stay in touch with people that you may never come in contact with or lost touch with if it weren’t for technology and social media. The problem is when we let the world behind the screen become our reality. When the virtual becomes more real to us than what is actually going on around us. When we care more about our appearance on social media and how many likes or interactions we get or what shows we’re gonna watch next on Netflix or the latest celebrity gossip, we lose real, we lose present, we lose authenticity, we lose engagement, we lost connection, we lose community. And those are the things God desires for us-to live in rich, full, deep community, to really connect and engage and interact with the people He’s placed in our paths, to be our real, true, genuine, authentic selves, the ones that He created us to be because He loves and delights in that version of us most, and to be in the here and now, this very specific moment in the present that He handpicked for us to live in.
When we live our lives constantly behind a screen, we miss out on the things that God for us right here in the present, the things that He’s out right in front of us just for us, the good works that He has prepared just for us. I thought by being on the world race, I would escape the screen life, but screens and technology are everywhere. And we have a choice to make, we can either choose to live in a fake, virtual world, behind a screen, or we can choose to live in the present, in the real world that’s all around us, the one that God created just for us to enjoy, where His creation shouts His name and screams how much He loves us. So here I am, choosing today to live a life that I fully in the here and now, fully engaged and connected to the moment right in front of me, completely involved and consumed by the present because it has so much more to offer than any screen ever could. I’m not saying that I am going to give up technology and screens entirely, I like being able to communicate with my friends and family while I’m gone. I am just saying that I am choosing to live a life that is boldly and unapologetically in the present moment right in front of me, the time and space that God chose just for me to live in and that I am going to soak up every single little thing that this very moment has to offer. I don’t want to spend my life living behind a screen, I want to spend my life doing the things I love with the people that I love and most importantly getting to know and experience my Papa in new ways every single day, because He is my adventure of a lifetime and I don’t want to miss it!
