Words Creating Space

On this Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, I feel burdened and weary from the chaotic state of the world and I know that I’m not alone. I would like to encourage you to let this burdened feeling propel you towards God. As Ash Wednesday approaches, I’d like to invite you to join me on a Lenten social media fast.

Instead of connecting with my friends online, I want to connect with them face to face or through a conversation on the phone. When I’m online I notice that a person’s humanity is often reduced to a sound bite – namely to their reaction to what the day’s news is – and as I am led into this reduction, I notice a change occurring deep within myself. I feel a spirit of divisiveness arising and with it a state of agitation and unrest. This restlessness causes me to feel alienated from myself and from my true center. 

If we believe that we are people who are made for God, it is imperative that we evaluate what takes us away from Him. I know in my own life, forces that vie for my attention and come between me and God are often subtle. Lent is a good time to ponder what has preeminence within our hearts and minds. A heavy, restless heart is the first clue that something other than God has been given priority there. Could we be a people more in love with the righteousness of our causes than with God Himself? Could it be as a people that this is happening to us bit by bit and as it does, we’re forgetting how to be human? Could we use this time of Lent to reconnect to our center by creating space for God’s voice to speak to us and communicate who we really are – beloved by Him? I believe as I hear His voice, the restlessness within me will fade away as I remember the extreme value of knowing and loving the God who first loved me. 

In the opening lines of Genesis, the image of God’s Spirit hovering over the chaotic waters gives me a picture of creation in process and helps form my conception of what would exist without God’s order. God’s Word establishes an awareness within me of His unseen power that brings order to chaos and lies behind all that we see. When my world gets reduced to reading others’ reactions to the day’s news, it feels like a bit of that watery chaos enters back into my life. I want to work with God to establish good boundaries for my life that protect me from any chaos that I possibly can.

Lent is a good time to evaluate social media from a distance. What is behind it? What does it lead my heart to feel? Who am I becoming as I spend more time with it? We are called to be people of depth of wisdom and insight. Social media has a tendency to form a binary view of people, casting them into categories and identifying them as being either for or against something, without the benefit of face to face interaction and of listening to one another’s personal, nuanced stories which provide more opportunity for connection and empathy to occur. 

I will never cease to be amazed at how easy it is for me to get my eyes off of the truest, most substantial bedrock of my life and focus on lesser things. I am hopeful that a social media fast will open my eyes to the ways I’ve been led to value  lesser things and re-establish my connection to the One thing that matters. In giving this up, I hope to find myself again and more clearly see God’s image stamped upon my neighbor.

Whether we are on social media or not – it seems that we have become people who have bought into the belief that other people’s incorrect political views are causing our unrest. Don’t get me wrong, we should be people who are burdened by injustice, but our outrage has lost its center in faithfulness and has become an accepted state of being. We live in a time in which shared outrage is a strong determinant of our group allegiance. We are not that different from a defeated people led off by a conquering nation, having to serve a different ruler while living far away from our original homeland.

Our outrage is driving us rather than our love for God. The true nature of our discontent stems from our noisy world in which it is hard to hear the voice of the One Who fuels our joy. As we spend more time focusing on who God is and on His intentions to complete us and to fulfill us, our approach to the world will look more like lament than outrage. I think as my realization of God’s original plan for humanity grows and I more clearly see  ways in which this plan is not currently being met, my concern for those who are marginalized grows and occupies more of my heart.  A shift occurs as I desire more to play my part in reflecting God’s good intentions for the world than in reflecting and championing my personal political views. 

It is presence with one another that changes our hearts, it is connection and presence that stills growing restlessness within us and it is presence that God wishes to offer us this Lenten season. It is the only thing that will bring us home to ourselves and the only thing that will make us available to one another.