Put down your phone, and take up your cross.
So I have been in a rut, of my own making. I honestly really do hate technology on many levels; when everyone has it I really do on some level have to embrace it, and it forces me to have to have self-control (kind of like keeping dark chocolate around the house).
I can look back 6 years ago, and up until recently I felt like my husband and I had better conversations at night, I was more disciplined in some areas mentally because I didn’t get as distracted in the short-term, and I could focus better prior to our having smartphones and money to buy things (and I slept better too!). I would also say I was probably more content in some ways not knowing constantly what was going on in the world or in pictures of people’s lives.
But I also know I cannot completely give up a smartphone. Texting without one is a beast. Maps and being able to look up things while out and about is invaluable.
Using it to be distracted or escape during my day though, is not helpful, or even wanted. I think, more than anything in my life, my phone can be the epitome of when Paul said, “I do that which I do not want to do . . and that which I want to do I do not do.” Because of course, something totally fascinating can be looked up on the internet . . . .
So I have just been asking God to help me with this. To show me how to live in the digital age in a way that is life-giving to me and my family.
I think all of us need to learn this, although for stay-at-home moms/people we have the additional problem of not having accountability for how we use the phone or technology in general compared to being in a public or regulated work space.
Put down your phone, and take up your cross.
So Jesus said to me, and I think He is saying this to all us moms, and to our culture as a whole.
When He said this to me, I immediately went to Matthew 16:24 –
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Yes, Jesus, I want to do that. Yes, I need to deny myself in the moment getting an answer to some stupid question that has popped into my mind, but mostly, if I am honest, I need to deny giving myself an escape.
I want to escape my life sometimes; do you?
I want to turn off the sin and selfishness that sometimes (frequently!) rages thru my house in the form of little people pushing and shoving and fighting and screaming, and the anger and frustration that rages thru me when I have to enter the fray YET AGAIN.
I want to go away to a happy place where my brain works and has coherent creative thoughts AND I have the ability to express them in a long, uninterrupted monologue (or even a paragraph) rather than feeling brain-dead exhausted struggling to put two words together (“go get that THING! That THING! You KNOW WHAT I MEAN!!!) AND no one interrupts me. Wow, what a place!
I am realizing that “escape” for me is actually a signal to rest. I need to rest. Not just at night, or during quiet time, but I need short periods of rest throughout my day. I need to give myself permission to do something different, to turn off one part of my brain and turn on another. Caveat – gardening has become a really restful thing lately and I am loving it!!
When I think of taking up my cross in this sense, I can easily identify that caring for little children is often a cross. It is often a place where my desires, my flesh and my natural self get crucified. Where I do serve over and over to the point of feeling death in my mortal body. Especially in the world we live in, stopping and helping and SERVING little children can seem at times mundane, and yes, boring.
All of us has a cross of suffering or self-denial we need to embrace. But Jesus didn’t want me to stop there.
But the cross is also power. See Paul says that
We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, BUT TO THOSE WHOM GOD HAS CALLED, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the POWER of God and the WISDOM of God. 1 Corinthians 1:23-24.
See, I wonder why I don’t have power in my life – contrary to popular belief, the reason I don’t have power is NOT because I am a stay at home mom when I should be working in business or government.
The reason I don’t have the power I want in my life is because I am not embracing Christ crucified. His death brought me life, and He is able to turn my little deaths into very real life for me and for my husband and kids, and beyond that, to the world.
See, this is relationship with Jesus,
That I may know Him, and the POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION, and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, being LIKE HIM IN HIS DEATH, and so somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:10-11.
That is taking up the cross. It is not simply a denying of self – if it were only that, we are, as Paul said, more to be pitied than all men. No – it is a denying of oneself so we can take up GOD.
The picture God gave me, once He showed me He wasn’t just asking me to do something hard for him, is that one of the altar boy holding up the cross as he leads the procession. See, I am not taking up a cross and bent over bloody and stumbling on a narrow difficult path – no my Savior already took that cross for me.
The cross I get to carry is the beautiful one that is no longer carrying a Savior but is Him carrying me – and me lifting up the cross in my life to lead my people back to Him.
The cross I get to take up is the one that is full of power, that signals there has been a resurrection from the dead and “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit who lives in you.” Romans 8:11.
Jesus told us to pray that He would show us,
“His incomparably great power for us who believe, which is like the working of His MIGHTY STRENGTH He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians 1:19:20.
So take heart, stay-at-home mom, weary worker. There is a cross, a banner of love that ONLY YOU can lift up. Take heart you who want to escape some aspect of your life in its craziness and brokenness and weariness. There is a cross to which we can cling, a cross that is not asking us to deny ourselves simply because but to BE a CAUSE. A cross that can literally flood my being with power at any moment in any place at any time.
He who raised Christ from the dead, can He not raise my tired limp brain back to think on Him? Can He not raise my children to love and follow Him thru me or when they are grown from me?
Can He not come in power to my little home and show Himself as a powerful loving God?
Our little moments matter. Our 5 minutes here and there matters. Our little obediences matter and they speak love and trust in Jesus. Each time we turn our gaze to Him instead of facebook or Instagram or the news, it matters (I’m preaching to myself right now!) It can look a million different ways, or it can look like turning back to that frustrating child with a smile that came straight from heaven. (Now THAT is the power of the Resurrection!)
He can, and He will, meet us from heaven, when we put down our phones and take up our cross. Please, ask me how I am spending my moments. Please, ask me if my phone is a tool or a distraction. I want the cross, and I want His power flooding my soul and my home.
I am giving Him my empty hands and empty brain, and He is filling them up with Jesus and joy and the creativity of heaven.
That is the trade He purchased on the cross. Disciples of Christ worship a risen Savior, whose glory shall fill the earth one day.
And, until then, He is waiting to fill ME.
