I’ve been backing off of some of my social media posting.  I will still make comments, still put up links now and then. But I’ve had an epiphany of sorts. While I love a good argument, and while I find it vital to engage in the ‘marketplace of ideas,’ I quite frankly have more important things to do.

A few days ago I saw a gentleman in the ER who had knee pain.  He was in his 60s, and I looked at his painful knees; they were rough, and thickly calloused over his knee-caps.  They weren’t really swollen, but they were tender.

‘Are you a roofer?  Or do you install flooring?’ I asked.  I figured he had worn his knees down over years of hard work. I’ve seen it before.

‘No sir,’ he replied humbly, ‘I pray a lot.’

A smile crossed my face, and his.  And I told him that was wonderful.  I did, gently, suggest that God might also understand if he would pray from a chair, and he agreed with a laugh.

Sitting, typing away in discussions and arguments, posts and reposts, links and counter-links, I think I’m doing something important. And sometimes, it’s true.  Truth has to be defended.  And yet, as I type and argue, my patient was wearing his knees down in prayer.

God must love that man and his knees.  I doubt he’s nearly as impressed by my typing or clever turns of phrase.

And of course, there are other reasons for me to use my time more wisely.  They are my wife, and my rapidly maturing children.  Time is a fixed quantity.  What we give to one thing, we take from another.  How do I want to look back on my life?  As a man with lots of time logged online?  Or as a man who relished and cherished every second of his life with his family?  Is it better to share, to link, to friend, or to hug, to laugh, to run, to hide, to play and to talk with the flesh and blood children and beautiful wife before me?

I love social media.  I enjoy all of my contacts and friends!  And I’m grateful for their ideas, and that they read my own.  But let’s all have a little perspective.  Let’s all spend a little more time in prayer, in studying scripture.  And in loving, fiercely and passionately, the human beings right before us.

Maybe, when the kids are grown, there will be more time for social media.  Of course, by then, we should perhaps be praying even more!

Edwin

 

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