Unplugging

We all need to be loved and to feel needed, but social media has given us a false sense of community. It has damaged our self-worth, and although we are more connected than ever, we are left many times feeling very alone. It’s not reality because it does not give full breadth and depth, only surface and projections.

Two years ago, my family went to Disney. It was a wonderful trip. We spent seven days eating with Mickey, riding with Donald, and took a picture with every prince and princess we could find. Throughout the week, I posted tons of pictures, all of our family smiling and enjoying the week. From a social media perspective, you would have thought my daughter was an angel and that every hour of every day was the best! But that would have been untrue. She was 6. She had meltdowns and temper tantrums, but those pictures never made it to Instagram or Facebook. People don’t often post the ugly or the darkness that comes with life. They post joyfully happy pictures, and when we scroll through our feeds, we often feel that our life should be that way too, even when we know it’s not. We question ourselves, and we wonder why our life can’t be like theirs, but the truth is their life isn’t like that either. It’s a false narrative, and it sets up unrealistic expectations that no person or family can achieve. It’s a photoshop of reality.

Social media, which our phones allow us to constantly connect to, have created a false self-image of our world and ourselves. When put down our phones, when we unplug from social media, we stop seeing ourselves as the world sees us, and begin to see the way God created us to be. Unique, special, different, a little weird, and beautiful. We find our real identity, that person God created us to be. We remember who we are and Whose we are.

Putting down the phone helps us find wholeness, order, renewed spirit, empowered emotions, healthy bodies, renewed mind, authentic relationships, and nurtured sense of ourselves that Sabbath-keeping creates. This practice of unplugging does not remove us from the world, rather it gives us permission to rest from the world, so that we can plug into ourselves and God.  Jesus knew that better than anyone. Time and time again, he would find time to pray, to rest in his ministry. It’s why he calls us this day to find rest in him.