Hey, it’s nothing particularly novel, but I feel it’s something I’m realising afresh: let’s not let social media time kill our own personal reflection time.

I’m convinced reflection is important. Really important. By reflection I basically mean thinking. Processing. For me that means thinking things through with an attitude of repentance and faith. With the mind of Christ. And a learning, thanking, thinking. Thinking back. Thinking forward. Being intentional in doing so. Pondering about what could be. Looking with thankful eyes. Reflecting.

But that’s not new for me. I’ve written before on how I think it’s really important not just to experience things, but to reflect on those experiences. That’s how I think we often learn. In fact that’s why I first started blogging (back in May 2006 – wowzers!).

But I’ve been realising afresh that something is killing that process time.

You see the times when I often process best are at what I call ‘bit-times‘. In-between moments. Waiting moments. Break moments. It’s in those bit-times that we naturally tend to think about what’s just happened, what’s coming up, how it’s all going.

But something’s killing my reflection time and that something is social media.

I’ve been struck recently by how my default response in ‘bit-time’ seems increasingly to be to get my phone out. Whether it’s that I’m waiting for someone, or I’m moving from one event to another, or I’ve just hit the end of the day and crashed out on the sofa, my next move all too often is to reach into my pocket and pull out the said device.

In all likelihood it’ll either be that I’m scrolling through the latest posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instragram – probably in that order) or else I’ll be checking my inbox for new mail. But as a result reflection is going out the window. It’s in with new, new, new. And there’s no space left for reflect, reflect, reflect on everything else.

Of course reflection doesn’t need to be done alone. It might be that daily debrief over dinner with a spouse or a housemate. It might just be walking somewhere with someone – taking ten minutes in the lunch hour to go for a thoughtful, thankful wander. But let’s not let social media kill those precious times. Even when we’re with others it can quickly become party policy to get phones out and scroll away. We give permission for each other to do it by doing it ourselves.

One of my friends has this killer John Piper quote as their background on their phone:

“One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.”

My intention here isn’t to talk particularly about prayer (although of course prayer naturally forms part of the God-centredness of a Christian’s processing of life), but it’s a pretty devastating exposure of both how slow we can be to pray and how quick we can be to drift to social media/email.

Any advocate of any productivity method will know that it’s uber-unproductive and counter-intuitive to be checking email more than a few times a day (and at any time when you can’t actually process the email you’re receiving there and then).

Well, likewise, how about only checking social media at a few particular slots in the day? An end-of-the-day fifteen minute Facebook catch-up? Twitter scrolls three times a day, using an app like Tweetdeck that allows you to quickly see if those who you’re really interested in have posted?

So this is me (someone who’s convinced that Instagramming/Tweeting/blogging are potentially good and godly uses of time) saying that because it’s personally important for me to be giving time to reflecting upon my life, I’m therefore gonna seek, with God’s help, to not let social media kill that all-important process time.

Here goes. Wanna join me?

Meditation is a concept that’s kind of been hijacked by the New Age movement over the last few decades. You know, the ’empty-your-mind-and-find-a-higher-stream-of-consciousness-within-yourself’ sort of thing. As a result it’s become something that Christians can be slightly wary of.

But maybe because of this we’re missing something from our daily walk with the Lord. We know we’re meant to read our Bibles, but do we know why we’re reading? The goal of Bible-reading should never be to blitz through pages of Scripture simply for the sake of ‘getting through it’. To meditate upon Scripture as we read is to think deeply about it, to feel deeply what we’re reading, to prayerfully consider it and let it seep into the way we think and feel, so that it changes the way we live. It’s to listen humbly and obediently to the God who is speaking to us through it, and to respond with joyful worship.

I’m reading Tony Reinke’s ‘Lit!’ at the moment (and loving it – review to come soon!) and as part of his encouragement to ‘read well’ he’s underlined to me again the importance of meditating on what we’re reading. He argues that it applies to all that we read, but it must certainly apply to the Bible. If you don’t like the word itself, fine, don’t use it; how about digesting, or bathing, or even marinating? But whatever you call it, we need to do it.

Reinke offers this fantastic quotation from the Puritan Thomas Brooks (1608-1680), who has just nailed it and makes you want to go and carve out some time to abide in God’s word:

‘Remember, it is not hasty reading, but serious meditating upon holy and heavenly truths, that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the bee’s touching of the flower that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time upon the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest, and strongest Christian.’

How do you help yourself to meditate upon God’s word?

(Quotation originally from Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices)

There’s been so much to give thanks for from EMA 2012 so far. Day 1 began with a wonderful exposition of Psalm 55 from Christopher Ash focusing our hearts on Christ as we began the conference. Sometimes we’re unsure how to sing the Old Testament psalms as those looking back at them now saved through Christ. It was a joy to have this psalm opened up in such a manner that we knew the tune of its very real anguish at the surrounding deluge of sin and despair, yet we were also called to sing it chiefly through Christ, knowing it’s a song He fulfilled, and that we now sing as those united to Him through faith.

Rather than just type up my notes from this, I thought I’d try something different. I’ve always been encouraged by reading Scotty Smith’s prayers, and so I’ve sought to pray through Christopher’s exposition of the psalm in a similar way, carving out and jotting down a sort of written meditation.

v1-8 – Evil is a Hellish thing, which we’ll long to escape…

Lord, the experience of evil is one that is real, and one that brings forth real cries of suffering and pain. Evil is hellish to face, whether in part or in full barrage. And yet in the psalmist’s words, amidst evil’s intense distress, is the ‘echo of a song yet to be sung’. It’s a song which we have heard now cried in Christ. Lord, You knew the noise of the enemy and the oppression of the wicked more forcibly, more terrifyingly, than I will ever know. In fact my crooked heart may experience some measure of true horror, but I know that the horror that seeps from my own heart is true enough as well. How easy to forget that. Yet You, the One who had no sin, became sin yourself. You were driven to the cross by the evil of mankind; corruption, selfishness, jealousy, greed, betrayal all cascading upon You until You were nailed to that wooden structure of death. And even then it was not over, for on that cross You experienced what it must be to be pure evil. And You bore it until it was Finished. I long to escape the mildest suffering and anguish, yet You cried ‘let not my will but Yours be done’. You didn’t ‘fly away’, Lord Jesus. Thank you.

v9-15 – But though it is hellish, evil is inescapable…

Indeed Lord, how hard to be a person amidst this evil, but more so ‘how hard it is to be the Shepherd King’ when people are as they are. Wherever people are we cause violence and strife, iniquity and trouble, ruin, oppression and fraud. And though we might long to run away from each other, to escape their bombardments, often we can’t. Yes, I’ve felt their effects; it is so often a bitter experience to live with fellow man. To step out of the door is to step into a world where selfishness breeds an ugly spawn of ill fruit that can make life taste truly bitter. The closest friend can be a source of much suffering. Undoubtedly, evil is inescapable. But, dare I forget, that is because of my own heart too: I am my neighbour’s problem, I am my own problem.

v16-23 – Evil is hellish and inescapable, but Christ is unshakable…

This is my experience in some measure Lord, but yet there is hope. I do not suffer alone as one with no hope. I do not have to deal with my own heart as one with no hope. I have hope, because I can say with the psalmist ‘as for me’ (v16, 23). You have done something that changes who I am. That is, you have done everything needed to bring me into a covenant relationship with You, the God who saves. Solid, strong, secure; You are my ‘LORD’, and so I’m unshakable. Though my own personal prayers falter and dither, with my energies distracted elsewhere, You prayed to the Father for me. You prayed and chose the cross, when even your closest disciples were closing their eyes, falling asleep and betraying their Lord. And now You intercede for me without ceasing.

So to hear your words, ‘cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you’, well what joy they should bring to my anxious and sensitive heart. Because, Lord Jesus, You have shown You are the One upon whom every burden of my heart can be cast. You promise to sustain, and as the one who gives each living thing its daily breath, I have no worries that You can.

To hear ‘You will never permit the righteous to be moved’, well, what hope would I have of even dreaming of owning that promise, if it were not for You? You are the One whose beautiful righteousness shines like the sun, and You are the One who beautifully chooses to clothe me in Your righteousness. In you, Lord Jesus, lies my only hope. In your unshakability lies my only hope.