Taking trips out to “recharge” away from the digital world is something I find ironic.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for getting out and taking in nature – but if we depend on those trips to unplug and we can’t find the willpower to do so in our own homes, what does that say about our need to be connected? Do we have to drive hundreds of miles just to resist the temptation to pick up our phone and open Facebook like a refrigerator, seeing who’s dating who or how my aunt’s doing on (the no longer relevant, thank goodness) Farmville? Maybe this plays into the “selfie culture,” where we’re so obsessed with image that we forget about the content – and I’m afraid that might bleed over into my faith.
To wax slightly philosophical for a moment here, I don’t believe there are big choices or turning points in your life where you’re on “a different path” than you could’ve been. Dare I say it?
I don’t believe in the phrase “God has a plan for your life.”
Life is a series of moments in time – doors, if you want to continue metaphors – that are constantly appearing and disappearing and opening opportunities to new moments where little choices swirl in the eddies of our life. Maybe I wore sandals instead of boots one day. Maybe I rode a bike to class instead of driving, and talked briefly with someone in the parking lot. It’s a gross oversimplification, I know, but stay with me. I believe God gave us free will with the knowledge that should we choose to love him, it would be all the more meaningful – so wouldn’t him having a definite micro “plan” for your life go directly against free will?
I don’t believe my God is so tiny that he would confine the vast, wonderful potential of the gifts he’s given us – life and free will – to one set path. Doors are opening and closing in perpetual motion, and he sees these opportunities and waits patiently. He is the Keeper of the Keys and can see the end of the paths we take, but always, there is another door that can add up to change our lives. They are the opportunities we take and miss, these doors that make up our lives. He rejoices when we rejoice, and mourns when we mourn, but always, he makes sure we have opportunities to either embrace or reject.
Are we so concerned with staying connected to our supposed one preset path that we lose touch with all the opportunities we can seize? This is my fear, that in our fixation with clutching to the image of following God’s plan, we in fact are blind to the content of so many small moments of reflected glory.
We get so afraid of losing connectivity that we are blind to the moments around us. I don’t have a solution to this, and it’s something I struggle with continually. So let’s give each other a little grace, and pray that we make more of an effort to stay connected with the people in front of us more often than names on a screen.
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