So it has been nearly five years since I have taken any time to write a post, share a thought or contemplate on some obscure random thing I saw. In that time I have changed jobs three times only to come back to the company that I had been at for 20 years, made the painful decision to find another place of worship, watched my two oldest children graduate college and high school and countless other real life events. It’s not that I have not shared these events in other ways. I mean I am on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (and attempting Snapchat unsuccessfully), I am an eighties child so I still use email and I still make attempts at sitting down and having a conversation around the dinner table.

But lately I have been contemplating how much things have changed in just a few short years. I used to have more meaningful conversations. I used to spend time on more things than just surviving. My days have always been busy but over the past few years it seems I have let myself become overwhelmed, overworked and always searching for the next thing to feed my appetite for what I am not sure. Living in Europe for the two years, allowed me some form of disconnectedness and honestly I have been trying to figure out how to get back to that.

Not to say that life has not been “interestingly”, it really has. But when your Facebook feed now consists of memes about our president, some new recipe for beef brisket and a handful videos, reposts and obscure news about some event on the other side of the world it gets to be difficult to sift through the madness. I have bought into the fakery and a secretly selfish ambition to be heard or noticed. I have placed value in how many likes or comments I get on posts. I have written and posted gifs which may have hurt people and have hid behind the mantra of , “I am just keeping it real”. I really have not done any of this intentionally, but as common decency and values have been replaced with bullying and an “anything goes” mentality, I have allowed myself to get sucked in on too many occasions and have had to ask for forgiveness often.  I know I am not alone in this, but as for me, I am measured by a different metric. I align myself with Christ and so therefore I must always examine my words, actions and behaviors with what I believe the Bible presents.

So where is the hope that we can truly change this course we are on? Maybe its political? Maybe one day those that govern can eventually see past their own agendas and selfish ambitions and lead with integrity and love for those they represent. Maybe it’s self? Maybe our answers are within in us to find? Maybe we just need to continue to explore the realms of our human nature. I mean that has worked so far right?

Friends, as my brother in Christ says constantly in his social feeds, “we must love one another”. We must seek to serve instead of being served. We need to put down our phones and get back to being in each others lives. We need to stop trying to display our mastery of words on social media to escalate and present a cause and start praying for one another or in some cases simply refrain from joining in the bloodbath.

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.”