What If You Checked In with God as Often as Your Phone?

The Lord and I had a funny interaction. 

I've been experimenting with trying to invite the Lord into my daily life more. I wouldn't say that's gone tremendously well, but attempts are still worth something, I’m sure. 

I was in the lower pasture, and I was explaining to God why I sometimes wouldn’t think about him as often. 

Lord, if I'm really working on a project, I'm very focused on that project. Maybe my brain is the kind of brain where, once it has an assignment, it focuses on that assignment for a few hours before it resurfaces and is ready to check in with the Lord again. 

I immediately had a tremendously skeptical question: “Oh, really? That focused, huh?”

Suddenly a montage of images flooded my mind, reminding me how I had actually spent my “focused” afternoon.

I was trying to focus, but maybe the computer needed a minute to think, so I’d check email in between. Or I’d get hungry and get a snack, and when I did that, I would listen to an audiobook. 

In short, this idea that I am actually so focused that I can't actually hang out with the Lord—total baloney. 

Oy vey! Repentance!

And as I prayed through, I thought about how, in the era of William Wilberforce, the British people had never had to confront the horrors of chattel slavery. The slave trade happened far from them, Africa to the Caribbean. Out of sight, out of mind. 

But in the marketing genius of William Fox, he connected the sugar that the British put in their beloved tea to the horrors of enslavement. 

That mundane, everyday beverage became a rallying cry. The 1791 sugar boycott didn’t immediately end the slave trade, but it did help raise public awareness.

I’ve been dreaming for some years: could I use picking up my phone as a reminder to check in with the Lord? 

A cell phone is the only thing I can think of as culturally ubiquitous as tea for the British. The only thing as mundane. 

Now just to do it. 

Lord, if I checked in with you as often as I checked in with my cell phone, I think my life would be pretty radically different. 

Teach me how to shift my attention to you. (Grayscale for a bit, I think! That will surprise and horrify me enough, every time I glance at my phone, to remind me: oh, yeah! Check in with the Lord!) 

Thank you, Lord, for your sense of humor, your willingness to be present, to correct, guide, tease, and love.

May we all be eager to be more present with you. 

We love you, Lord. Amen.

Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with the gospel,

Amy Joy

P.S. Grayscale instructions, from Google:

On an iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters, turn it on, and select Grayscale. 

On Android, go to Settings > Accessibility > Color Correction (or Vision Enhancements) and select Grayscale, or find it under Digital Wellbeing > Bedtime Mode.

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