Rachel Allord

I like my smart phone. I like Facebook. I like texts and emails. I’m warming up to Pinterest and Twitter. (Slowly) I like these things… and yet often they seem like clambering puppies. Before kids, I worked with infants in a daycare one summer and I don’t know why but when 4 o’clock in the afternoon rolled around all of the babies wanted my attention at the same time: Me me! Pick up me! Spend time with me!

Sometimes, this is how social media comes across: Frantic. Desperate. Demanding. Coffee in hand, I often give in to them because they’re just so loud, causing certain thoughts in my head to become so loud, thoughts like, Oh horror! I never texted so and so back! Or, I need to post that pic to so and so’s wall like I promised! Yet once I start responding I only feel further sucked into the social media vortex and my what-I-should-be-doing and where-I-could-be-going and even what-I’m-missing-out-on lists grows. Pinterest, to me, feels like a never-ending to-do list. Gosh, there’s so much I could be doing with those mason jars and leftover bits of fabric.

And there sits my Bible. Quietly. Not waving its hands around, so it doesn’t seem as urgent. Sometimes, when I sit down with it, it offers instantaneous crystal clear answers to my specific problems, but more often it calls me to transformation, opens me up, pierces me like a sword. Pinpoints areas that need changing. Spotlights grace. Makes God bigger, which makes me smaller, which surprisingly, makes me happier.

Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts (Psalm 119:2)

Yeah. That’s what I want.

This isn’t a guilt post—or at least it’s not meant to be. (Although conviction can be disguised as guilt we can too easily shake off.) I’m not trying to wag my finger at you; if anything I’m wagging it at me. Because even though I almost always feel more at peace, more centered, more content when I sit at the feet of Christ and “choose the better thing” (Luke 10:42) I still struggle to do it. But the more I reach for my Bible, the less I struggle, and the less I feel pulled in twenty different directions, and the better my day seems to go.

I don’t reach for my Bible because I’m good; I reach for my Bible because God is good and I need his help. Today, this morning, I need help. I need help loving. Need help handling this, responding to that, making sense of that other thing. Need help seeing my blindside, my own shortcomings. Need help discovering who God is, who I am, who he made me to be.

I need help and contrary to what my iphone wants me to think, Siri doesn’t have all the answers.