I’ve been mostly absent from social media for the past few months. I come and go but mostly I’ve been offline trying to live into my present.
Living in the now is no small task.
We are a people of anticipation or we are a people of despair. As people who believe in Christ, hope is our native tongue but we often struggle to translate that language to the world. It’s not enough to just hope we get beamed out of here when the world goes up in flames. We’re a people of a coming Kingdom, we must live with an “on earth as it is in heaven” kind of vision. And it’s this vision that is so hard in the day to day.
The world is a mess, the world is beautiful. There is glory everywhere, everything is broken. It is a both/and sort of situation and that tension is painful and messy.
It’s easy to want to divide what seems secular and what seems sacred and pick a side. It’s natural to want to measure our worthiness in how much we do. It’s also normal to want to escape from it all.
I go on Twitter and I feel all the sharp edges of the world pushing in. There is so much injustice, so much to care about, so much going on in the world that can’t be ignored. It would be easy to weave an entire identity out of worthy causes and hashtags, to hear the ranty edges of my voice importantly banged onto the keyboard in 140 character tweets. I could spend the day tweeting on issues and raising awareness and adding my voice but I know I’m called to the work of now and I can’t do both faithfully. So I often log off, I close the lid of my laptop, I swipe up to end the apps on my phone and I do the world changing things I can, small unseen things that I hope still matter. Sometimes when I look at everyone advertising all they have done, what I do doesn’t feel like enough.Sometimes when I look at everyone advertising all they have done, what I do doesn’t feel like enough.
Maybe that tension is ok too? The balance before conviction derails into guilt, to rest fully and yet know we are continually called to good works, to justice, to peacemaking. This is what it means to abide.
Thank you for sharing, Alia! I have found myself doing the same with social media for the past few weeks. I’ve found joy in living, being in the now, and being present with the people God has specifically placed in my life. I appreciate your thoughts and this post. My women’s group at church is in the middle of the “We Saved You a Seat Study”, and I’m really enjoying it! Thanks for your contributions.