Technological Suffocation

My laptop broke down about two weeks ago. Well, I could still work on it. I just had to hold the back left part of it up about two inches. Very annoying. I ended up sending it to HP to have them replace the system board. I finally got it back two days ago.

During the about 10 days that it was gone, I went through what I call a computer fast. (In reality it wasn't a true computer fast. I still used another computer, but it wasn't my laptop with all my files on it.) All my lessons were prepared on paper! Can you believe that!? I can't.

Oddly enough, the lessons that I prepared dealt with simplicity, Jacob's faith, my own faith, and solitude. It is strange that this happened to be the week I thought about simplicity! It is strange that God chose this time to remind me of how he worked so powerfully in my life in the past! It is strange that solitude of heart and soul is something I seek more and more throughout my day.

Yesterday was the first day back in my office with the computer. If you want to talk about how busy I felt, here you go. I was drained after the first two hours of my day! I had several studies going on, but I could hardly concentrate because I was tired. Tired from being up late on my computer the night before. I had all kinds of emails to respond to, people to put on our church email list, and files to update on my computer.

About midday I realized that my computer seemed to tbe the culprit. I felt busy because of all this technology. There might be something there in preparing lessons without the computer. There might be something there in restricting the time I use the computer. There might be something there to really seek God rather than busying myself with computer stuff.

Right now I have my Yahoo mail up, my Facebook account opened, and notepad stuff for my blog. Before writing this, I had Dreamweaver open. I will throughout the day probably have 5-7 different computer applications open because I need to go from one thing to the next and back.

Some food for thought from a computer guy: let's intentionally detach ourselves from the busy-ness of trying to do so many things at once. What would happen if we put aside our computer for even 4 hours of our day? Perhaps I can intentionally do this in an effort to help God speak to me. Am I listening?