Turn It Off For Lent

“Be still, and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!”
The Lord of hosts is with us;the God of Jacob is our fortress.

-Psalm 46:10-11

This year we are entering the season of Lent in a somewhat precarious global situation. While we can never be certain what is to come, the present circumstances capture our imaginations and inflame our anxieties in ways that can be overwhelming and emotionally charged. It is very important for our mental, physical, and spiritual well-being to set aside time to be still and remember God’s power and presence in this world.

I do not often give specific directives relative to Lenten practice. I typically offer general encouragements and reminders to reflect on the activities or absence of activities in your life that may cause you to feel separated from God. Rarely has anyone told me that chocolate genuinely has a negative effect on their spiritual life. Lenten discipline is not merely about doing without something for 40 days. It is a chance to ask God to help and guide us into a new way of living, drawing closer to who God has made and called us to be.

To that end, I do have a specific recommendation for this year, related to all that is happening.

Here it is: turn it off.

Turn what off? Turn off the television in your house, turn off your smart phone, turn off the radio, turn off the podcast, turn off clicking from story to story on your computer.

I am not saying that you need to turn away from the news completely, but I am saying that the permanent feed of information into our brains is not good. It affects our ability to be still and recognize God, just as the psalmist encourages.

I suggest using the timer feature on your phone for the apps you find most distracting, especially if they encourage mindless scrolling. Could you start at 90 minutes a day and then work down to an hour and then maybe 30 minutes?

Can you set a schedule for when you will watch a news channel and then for a certain amount of time? Think about how long it might have taken your parents or grandparents to read a newspaper and then use that as a guide.

If you are accustomed to keeping on a radio or the television or streaming information from your computer just to have background noise, try switching to a music-only format if you aren’t ready to fully embrace silence. Consider playing nature sounds. Let your spirit take a break from constantly receiving new information. Let it ruminate on what it already knows about God’s love, mercy, and grace.

The season of Lent offers us a chance to reset ourselves in our vocation as resurrection people, Good News people. In order to embrace this opportunity, we must heed the Spirit’s urging and work within us to become more attuned to the truth of God’s goodness all around us. I encourage you to accept this Lenten invitation to do exactly that, beginning with starting to limit some of the sounds of this world.

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