The meandering mind

I took my son fishing in our canoe. Initially, it was a very unsteady ride. But eventually, he got comfortable and used to the movement of the canoe. After about an hour or so, he became complacent. The canoe leaned slightly and he panicked, then overcorrected by shifting his weight too quickly. A split second later we were both drenched.  

How often does this play out in our daily life? We get comfortable with the flow of life. We get complacent with prayer and time in the word. In our complacency, we forget that Christ is our center and try to handle everything on our own. Soon a wave hits us and we try to deal with it on our own, thus ending up drenched.  

We must be mindful of Christ in the times of smooth sailing, lest we lose our center when life throws us a wave.  

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was an alarming look into the environmental landscape of the early 1960’s that set the environmental movement on fire, resulting in environmental activism and regulations put into place to protect our natural resource. She documented the spring when the birds stopped singing and the silence that replaced it. I see a second coming of this silent spring, this time it is not the birds that have stopped singing in the parks, but our children. It is not pesticides and pollution stopping the laughter in the park, but the tablets and phones we put in front of them. I take my kids to the park, and I do not see kids running around. I see a cute little girl setting in a swing, motionless. As I wonder if she is in a comma, I see her trance like state briefly interrupted by a sudden flurry of movement as her thumbs dance across the screen of her tablet.