Distractions appear in my peripheral vision all the time. This happens all the time on social media. Images, links, blogs, articles – they call out:
Read this! Watch this! Look at this! Like this! Buy this!
Image via Flickr Creative Commons
There they are. Are they worth my time? I can easily get distracted, click, and explore only to find it was a waste of time. They may be good but are they good enough for me to spend on?
Let me emphasize the word ‘good’ here. It can be good, but is good what I really want in my life? Can good be a waste of time? There’s a lot that’s good out there, but I find that sometimes, good is the enemy of what is excellent. Good is a place that I can settle; not reaching higher for what is excellent. Good can be taking in a quantity of information which can turn out to be useless. I want excellence in what I look at, search out, or read – images, blogs, articles, music. I am setting the bar higher in my life. Finding what is excellent for me means I seek quality, not quantity in my life.
What am I learning? I won’t let social media control my life, eat into my day, and waste my time with a myriad of good or not so good things. Yet, I do love it for exploring new ideas, learning from creative people, keeping up with what is going on, and more.
About one month ago, I decided that social media was created for me not me for social media. I don’t want to fit into its box. I want to find my own path on it, what is excellent to build me up, form relationships, and grow. I want to use it in an excellent way. I am more selective, reaching out to excellent people, creative people, challenging and insightful people – people I agree with or don’t agree with, people who are completely different from me.
Whenever I encounter change and transition in my life, I seek the Lord in prayer. God always has this incredible sense of humor and timing that zings me with one-liners. These one-liners pack a punch, grab my attention and transform my life with just a few words
In this case, I was meditating and Holy Spirit whispered to me:
Restrict your diet.
I partake of that which enriches my life, forming me from the inside out by what I digest and learn from. Words, images, sounds and more all have inherent power to build me up. They also have power to distract me and waste my time. What to choose? What to leave? I release all to Holy Spirit’s direction for me in Christ. Not everything that is good, is good for me.
I am created to have a distinct palette. What I eat is absorbed into my system, giving me strength, vitality, and energy. I am choosing more discriminately what I read, listen to, and watch so that what flows from me is filled with life and creative expression in Christ.
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious––the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. 9 Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies (Philippians 4:8-9 Message)
In Christ,
Debra
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