I remember buying our first cordless phone set with one extension for the master bedroom upstairs. Before that, our telephone was attached to the wall in the kitchen and the receiver was attached to that by a longish curly cord, which was great for fiddling with while you chatted, but annoying when you needed to reach something across the room during a call. And every other day or so, you’d have to dangle the receiver upside down by the cord and let it spin until the knots untangled.
Local calls were one price per month and long distance was charged by the minute. If you were visiting with guests, cooking a meal, nursing or rocking a sleeping baby, or using the bathroom, you just let the phone ring. Even before answering machines to take messages and screen calls and way before caller ID, we didn’t worry overmuch about who or what we’d missed on the other end of the line. If it was a family emergency, you’d just hang up and dial again and again until the person on the other end realized it was something urgent and answered the phone, but you never ever called anyone past nine o’clock unless it was an emergency.
Somehow, everyday use of smartphones and cellular technology has created for me at least this gut level reaction akin to glancing up and realizing you don’t see your child who was just playing nearby. I’ve made it a regular practice to leave my phone on the kitchen counter while I’m with my grandchildren, but when I’m sitting still, there’s an almost mechanical draw between my hands and my device.
Just because we have this technology that we can hold in our hands doesn’t mean we necessarily need to give such attention to it 24/7.
When I started college PCE (pre-cellular era) I drove two hours alone one way. I was expected to make a collect phone call to my parents to alert them of my safe arrival. They would give me a few minutes grace and begin dialing my number in case I’d forgotten. If they didn’t reach me, my dad or granddad, who lived much closer to the school, would start on the path I would have traveled, assuring I was found, safe and unharmed. I survived for nearly three decades without a cell phone.
If I’d stopped off at my grandparents on the way, my grandmother was much less patient about my calling. I remember early cell phone conversations with her as I drove home from taking my kids to elementary school. When the call dropped between towers, and it always did, she was in a panic- certain I’d been in an accident- before I could regain a signal and call her again. Worrying comes naturally to us all, but this level of panic has now been transferred to simple text messages. Why hasn’t she read my message? How dare he turn off read receipts. We’re impatient with each other and we enjoy less and less privacy as a result.
We’ve been enslaved by devices meant to offer us convenience. The technology is not bad but the round the clock access to each other and every form of information imaginable is beyond reasonable. I find myself clinched tightly inside sometimes for no obvious reason, but as my daughter and I observed about her toddler earlier this evening, we are easily overstimulated. He was beside himself with exhaustion yet fighting sleep. As she coaxed him through his bath and prepared him for bed, it was necessary to set everything else aside and extend some grace to both herself and her little one. Once he gave up fighting it, his breathing evened out and he rested so peacefully.
I’m grateful that when I was a young momma investing in the next generation, there weren’t nearly as many distractions as there are today. Our kids’ only screen time was afternoon PBS cartoons when the weather was just right and the rabbit ear antennae found the signal. We picked bumblebee flowers outside and wove garlands from them. We collected rocks and sticks and built pillow forts or Lego or Lincoln Log houses. My four and a half year old taught his six year old sister to ride her bicycle without training wheels as we talked over the fence to our neighbors.
We saw it happening when our kids were in middle school and their friends were all together in a restaurant, sitting around the same table without talking to each other- each one texting someone who wasn’t there on their brand new flip phones. Now we, the parents, are just as bad. We have dinner together, devices in hand. Most church services and concerts are interrupted by at least one ringtone someone forgot to silence, yet we wonder at our inability to concentrate for longer than a minute.
Anything that tempts us, drawing our time and attention from God first and then from our families and neighbors, can easily become an idol. There were obviously no cell towers or phone lines in the wilderness that Israel traveled, but there was plenty to tempt them between Egypt and the Promised Land. What the Bible records is for our benefit.
“These things happened to them as examples for us.
They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age.
If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall.
The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience.
And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand.
When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.”
1 Corinthians 10:11-13 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/1co.10.11-13.NLT
Can we choose to give ourselves and each other some grace and disconnect more often? Can we set aside our electronic selves long enough to put down roots where we’re planted? We can choose to worry less when we say the thing first to God. Maybe that’s as far as it needs to go anyway. We will never tell Him anything He doesn’t already know, and He’s the only One with any power or authority to change things anyway.
By all means, make the phone call to let your parents know you’re home safely and you love them. Ask for help when you need it and extend a hand to someone in need, but don’t allow your hands to be tied by your technology.
“You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you.
You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is beneficial.”
1 Corinthians 10:23 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/1co.10.23.NLT
“Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others.”
1 Corinthians 10:24 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/1co.10.24.NLT
The next generation is watching us intently.
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