Just fifteen years ago today

 

Just a few days ago, driving from one point to another across town, I was grateful that my phone could direct me on the shortest path and keep me from getting totally lost.  Earlier, I had checked the weather, put a hold on a book at the library, and looked up a verse.  I texted my husband that I was on the way home.

What did we do before we had cell phones?

I was shocked when I read –on my phone this morning—that just 15 years ago today, the first iPhone was sold in stores. 

How rapidly our lives and our culture have changed.   And in that short course of time, Americans now spend an average of 5.4 hours per day on phones. 

In his book You Are What You Love, professor and philosopher James K. A. Smith examines our seemingly innocent routines.  “Many of us have adopted habits without much reflection…And what if those rituals aren’t just something you do?  What if they are also doing something to you?”

This morning, as every morning, more than 70 percent of people checked their phones in their very first moments of waking up and starting their day.  When she read that statistic, author and Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren was shocked. And moments later, she realized she was one of them.  From the moment she woke up, she realized the stress of the world was infiltrating her thoughts and woven into her day. Good morning, the world is a mess.  She made an intentional choice and changed that routine. In examining her own personal habits, she realized that she didn’t have to live that way.  She chose something different, and began by starting her first moments by praying and reading a passage of the Bible.  And almost immediately, she noticed, “…very subtly, my day was imprinted differently,” she observed.

“We have forgotten that there are better ways to live,” she says in her book Liturgies of the Ordinary. 

How have our phones changed us in the past fifteen years?  They have moved from being a luxury, to an essential, to a preoccupation, to a type of addiction.  Let’s call it as it is.  Objects in the mirror may be closer than we think.

In You Are What You Love, Smith notes in one research report:  When they analyzed brain activity…they found that “the Apple products are triggering the same bits of their brains as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith.”   This is your brain on Apple:  it looks like it’s worshiping, Smith points out.

Keep the phone in perspective as it is:  a valuable device, but just a tool to be used.  May we be wise in how we invest our time and relationships, aware of all the glittery distractions, careful of the undertow, and conscious of not just what we are doing but what it is doing to us. 

 

All things are lawful,

but not all things are helpful.

All things are lawful,

but not all things build up.

               1 Corinthians 10. 23

See Me

Fifty years ago, in the 1970s, developmental psychologist Edward Tronick researched interactions between infants and caregivers.  His study was called The Still Face Experiment, in which an adult caregiver or parent was placed face-to-face with their very young child.  The adult was instructed first to interact with the baby, look away for a moment, and then look back at them with a still face, devoid of all recognition, expression, or response.

In his book  The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World,  author Andy Crouch relates what happened next in each and every instance:

 “The videos of these experiments, which last only a few minutes, are wrenching to watch, as the adults feign indifference to the children’s presence while the children exhibit greater and greater degrees of dysregulation, writhing in frustration and ultimately collapsing in distress.  That is the result of just a few moments of deprivation.  When children are deprived of this kind of recognition and mutual attention for months or years, they may possibly survive – but they do not thrive.”   

Watch the video here.

What happens when those interpersonal connections are broken?  Deprived of recognition and love that each person so incredibly needs, even at such a young vulnerable age, what happens?  The baby does everything to get the caregiver’s attention to be seen and heard.  And when there is no response, the child gives up.  Over time, without recognition or relationship, desperate people do desperate things to be seen.

I read Crouch’s book the same week as the Buffalo and Uvalde massacres in June 2022, both conducted by teenage boys with an arsenal of firearms and desperate hearts aching to be known and seen.

We grieve for the greatly-loved victims, their lives cut short by unspeakable violence.  But Jesus also cries for the perpetrators.  These incredibly broken young men are precious in His sight too.  What happened and what might have been saddens us all.

"Look me in the eye," those babies tried everything to say.  See me.  Is that what these young men were desperately trying to cry out?  See me?

We were wired for relationship by our Creator, which is why God says radically in Scripture:  Love your neighbor.  Love the stranger.  Love even those who do not like you.  See them. Look them in the eye. Forgive.  Help them get their ox out of the ditch, even if it’s their own fault. Respond to them with the unexpected grace that always takes us by surprise. Real love is not an earned commodity.  Love says, “I see you.”

Do others just see a still face, an uncaring countenance in us?

We all struggle with something.  And we all have people in our lives who at some point loved us through our behaviors, imperfections, and resistance.  Through a difficult season, years of tumult, or for a profound moment, they looked into our faces and did not turn away.  They responded in some way. And they very well –even unknowingly-- may have pulled us back from the edge of despair and pointed us to a different trajectory for our lives.

We are surrounded by opportunities to pay attention, see, hear and love others daily. Look me in the eyes, those babies tried to say.  See me. 

People may not remember your name or what exactly you said or did, but they will remember forever how you made them feel and that you responded to them.

We have the capacity to love because God first loved us.  Eight hundred years before His birth, the prophet Isaiah wrote of Christ:  “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.  Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands…”  Isaiah 49. 15 

And when we know that we are so beloved by Him, we can pursue the Image of God in those around us.

Precious in His sight.

Heavy Lifting

 God does not say to us,

   "Here, let Me carry that for you."

He says,

    "Let Me carry you through that."

 

For I, 

     the LORD your God,

hold your right hand;

it is I who say to you,

"Fear not,

     I am the one who helps you."

                    Isaiah 41. 13

Keep Showing Up

One of our daughters was training this past winter for her first marathon.  She carefully followed the training program, running with friends when she could, fitting in runs between work and picking up the kids from school, and at times, realizing the loneliness of a long-distance runner.  On one of her long runs, she came across a woman ahead of her lumbering along the same path.  As she passed her, our daughter said, "You've got this."

A few miles down the same seemingly endless pathway, as our daughter started to feel the strain and struggle of completing the day's mileage, she felt another runner coming alongside her.  It was the same woman, now showing up and keeping pace with her.  They didn't say a thing.  They didn't have to say a thing.  They just ran together.  And it encouraged them both. 

A word fitly spoken is 

like apples of gold in a setting of silver.  

                       Proverbs 25.11

 In all our many moves from one address to another, I have a friend who keeps showing up that way, in one way or another, coming alongside me with phone calls, notes and visits. We see each other rarely, but each time, the conversation jumps right back in, as if one of us had just gone to get a cup of coffee in the kitchen and came back into the same room.

Even after all this time, she keeps on showing up.  

I have been struggling with this blog for the past few months.  This week as I was running, I was questioning whether I should continue writing at all. Does it make a difference?  Does it even matter?

By the end of the run, I decided that I  just need to be faithful.  God never works in singular outcomes.  I cannot know whether it matters or not.  But that is not the point.  God works deeper than that. God redeems.

Often when I am running, a shy deer will show up, unexpectedly emerging out of the tall trees and glancing at me for a fraction of a second.  It feels like God saying, "I'm still here.  Even when you don't see Me."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of those deer moments happened in a simple email I received that very evening after my run.

My friend showed up again with a bit of encouragement that I really needed it at that moment.  She had no idea what I was struggling with. But she acted on a nudge from God and fed my soul by just writing me a reassuring note, "I loved your piece What Late Fine?  And I have been passing it out to my family and friends."  

God redeems.  Imagine that.

Like our daughter whispering an encouraging word to that lonely runner on her path, God provides in unexpected ways and in unlikely places.  It is not that God shows up --He is already here.  We are the ones late to the party.  When we keep showing up on caller ID, on the doorstep with a meal, in the hospital room for a visit, to come alongside on both literal and proverbial paths, He uses each one of us to kindle others back to strength.  

Even when we don't realize it, even when we don't think it makes a difference, God brings His faithfulness to the situation.  And He strategically positions us to unfold it in real time.  That is how we love friends, family, and those we don't even know.

How many times do I think about others and never say a thing, as if it doesn't matter.  But what if it does?  It may cost us something, or we may consider it small change in our pocket, but that moment of kindness is always a game changer. 

Keep showing up.

 Brothers and sisters,

if you have any word of encouragement for the people,

           say it.

                           Acts 13. 15

 It may be the very strength someone needs.

It may be the very strength we need, just to say it.

We would never be reluctant,

     if we knew how profoundly God redeems.

Keep showing up.

 

God does not make checklists

 Ok, God, what do I need to do today? 

When we ask God to order our days, He does not make checklists, or prioritize, or divide the significant from the insignificant, put everything in alphabetical order, or decide what is worthy of our time, effort, and achievement.  He does not send out an agenda or marching orders.

God does not order our day by arranging it systematically.  God ordains it by bringing His divine appointments and sacred encounters into these 24 hours, even those that may appear as glitches or interruptions, or simply ordinary matters.  But God ordains by bringing His purposes and designs, by weaving awe into the great and small, and by infusing eternity into our days. Our times are in His hand.  God does not just fill, but fulfills. 

God does not call us to tasks.  God calls us to Himself.

What do I need to do?  I find that I am asking the wrong question.  Instead of defining the day by tasks completed, checking them off, as if to complete my day by what I do, I need to be asking what I need to be today.

What we write at the top of our page and at the beginning of our day, determines not just our course but reveals our hearts.

 

God takes care of the rest. Everything is both ordered and ordained, set apart for His glory, anointed and appointed.  We have only to be faithful in what He lays before us.  Faithfulness fits all circumstances, stretching over, enlarging, covering, and embroidering far beyond what our eyes can see and exceeding our lifetimes.  I can't do everything.  But I can be faithful.

And so, in whatever situation we are slogging through or up to our necks, we can approach it, navigate it, and see it differently. And because our lives are differently ordered by His Presence, a new operating system, we can respond differently.  We can live, work, and love differently, because we have been changed by the Almighty.  Not abiding by a holy to-do list, but abiding in Him.  It is all sacred.  And that changes everything.

Even when we don't see it or understand it, God is not just using what we do, but God is working in and through us.

In his epic devotional My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers points out, "We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.  As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises."

Order my day, O LORD.

Ordain my time.

Guide my steps.

Direct my thoughts.

Align my heart with Yours. 

But I trust in You, O LORD;

I say, "You are my God."

My times are in Your hand.

                      Psalm 31. 14-15

Not the way I would have taken

Early in the day last week, I headed out for a needed oil change.  I knew how to get there as I had taken that route so many times before.  But wary of possible traffic delays at that early hour, I entered the address into my GPS, even as I was about to turn left at the light. 

The result surprised me.  Turn right, the voice directed.  Why would I want to do that?  That's not the way I would have taken.  Turn right, the voice insisted.  It must be confused, I thought.  

But what if it was correct? 

So I turned right, against my better judgment, as if to prove my rightness to a digital voice. 

It just didn't seem accurate.  I passed over a bridge about a half mile down the road, turn left, into a residential area.  And then two miles later, turn right.  And then an immediate left.  

Where in the world was I headed?  I glanced at the little postage stamp-sized map.  It made no sense at all to me.  But sometimes that is not the point.  Just trust me, I felt the voice was trying to say.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had never been so far on this particular winding road.  I drove past historic houses and alongside fields and over rivers and creeks, past an idyllic White Oak Farm and an ancient house called Two Rivers, built in 1820, the sign said.  I was no longer thinking about being on time for an oil change, nor the crazy instructions from a seemingly misguided directional device.  I had no thought of wishing I was on the interstate, no desire to be on the four-lane with insufferable traffic lights and fast food offerings.

It was no longer about the fastest route, or even a short cut. 

I felt like I was trespassing, drawn into the wonder of the rich rolling countryside around me, transported into another time zone,  soaking in the beauty of a land that has looked spectacularly the same for hundreds of years, excluding the ribbon of asphalt road that brought me here. Not just ordinary fields, because ordinary does not appear in God's dictionary. Nothing barren at all that God does not redeem. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As J. R. R. Tolkien once observed, "Not all who wander are lost." We may not be sure where we are, but God does. "C'mon, there is something I want to show you."

It was not the way I would have taken.  But oh, the panoramas I would have missed.  And oh, the vistas I miss everyday, all around me. If I only paid attention.  If I am only willing.  If I only listen and look.

We just need to follow God that way.  Trust Me in this.

 

Commit your way to the LORD,

trust in Him,

and He will act.

                 Psalm 37. 5

 

Commit your day to the LORD,

trust in Him,

               and wow.