PONDERING....

I've recently got invited to join FACEBOOK. My daughter had told me about it on a recent trip we took to Nashville. She explained how she had connected with an old friend from elementary school, no less!!!! How cool!!! Then shortly after we returned, a friend of mine sent me an invitation to "join". I thought "Why not? " After all, I want to be a "cool, with it grandmother"...not an old fuddy dud! So I asked my daughter what was involved. She told me to just follow the directions on the facebook page and it was easy. Then she added a gentle comment that went something like this "but you may not find too many people on there you know, Mom....not many people your age fool with FACEBOOK". That was not going to stop me, because like I said ....I refuse to be an old fuddy dud who cannot keep up with today's technology (at least some of it).

I have to admit it can be addicting. In fact, I've been on there for a while this morning. And now I'm wondering, "Was that a good thing or not?"

Lately I've been thinking a lot about the little insidious ways that Satan has of getting us to NOT focus on Christ and on the things HE wants us to focus on. In a recent Bible study we talked a lot about our insatiable appetite for STUFF. Why is that? Well, as we discussed, we are bombarded constantly with advertising telling us we NEED it...we MUST have it...we can't LIVE WITHOUT IT!!! Back in my grandparents day, they didn't have television, they had few magazines and most could not afford them anyway, so they were not bombarded with such things. They lived a simple life on the farm and frankly had too much to do to worry about what someone else had.

Today, every where we turn...TV, radio, billboards, magazines, movies, snail mail, email, you name it, is a source for marketing someone's product, to convince us that we absolutely MUST have it to be successful, beautiful, and current with the latest fads in technology.

But the problem with all this STUFF is that it takes more and more of our time. Just think about it....

The more beauty products you buy, the longer it takes you to get ready to go somewhere...

The more gadgets you buy, the more you have to load them, text with them, listen to them, answer them, read them, and the more they interrupt you when you least want to be interrupted...

The more things you buy, the more you have to maintain them and the more it costs, which means you have to work more to keep them maintained....

The more you get involved with technology....whether it be FACEBOOK, email, texting, on the cell phone, whatever your particular vice(s) may be....the less time you have to sit and have conversation with your friend or your spouse or your child, the less time you have to spend in the Word, the less time you have to meditate on scripture, the less time you have to go to church.

Now I'm not saying that any of these things are WRONG in and of themselves. In fact, technology is really grand (when it works), but...here is just something to ponder.....are we getting so wrapped up in all of our stuff and all of our technology that we are leaving God out of our lives? Are we finding we have less and less time for Him?

If you are bemoaning the fact you never have time for a quiet time, you never have time to read the Word, you never have time to pray.....then maybe....just maybe you should take a long look at where you ARE spending your time. God says "Be still and know that I am God." And I'm pretty certain being still did not involve a Blackberry or an iphone!