WHAT MATTERS?

I’m back on facebook after about a two-month hiatus. And if you know me, you’re aware I have to turn every experience into a (hopefully) profound life lesson. Naturally, I’ll attempt to do that now…

For the last couple months, my focus had been off. I’d been consumed with things that have distracted me from giving my all to some stuff I’m supposed to be doing—especially schoolwork. As I contemplated gaining it back, little things came to mind, one of them getting off facebook.

At first I ignored it. I mean, I’m a big facebook fan. I’m not on it all the time, but I check it for a few minutes—a few times daily. The routine was email 1, email 2, email 3, email 4 (yes, I have four accounts, each for a different purpose; I love me some email:)), then a stop on facebook—to see which friends have updated, skim the mini-feed, post an article, update my “about me” one-liner...you know the deal. But somehow, typing in my terp alum email and password and hitting “login” became part of the focus problem. After a couple days of fighting it, I deactived. I made sure I couldn't receive emails from facebook groups or alerts about messages from friends. Suddenly, I was completely cut off from the site.

I thought being off would be hard, but it actually wasn’t. When friends talked about their latest photos, or gossiped about someone else’s page, I would only momentarily whine about not being able to behold the juicy details. Aside from spending less time on the internet unrelated to school, I generally felt less distracted…my mind was clearer. And the clearer my mind was, the more God started showing me what was wrong with my focus, and how to change it. This didn’t happen just because I got off facebook, but it was certainly part of the catalyst for renewal.

Colossians 3:2 says “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.” How do we do that? We put aside anything that keeps us from thinking above—big or small. Even “logging in” can keep us looking downward. When our focus returns to things above, we can actually do what the rest of the passage says, in verses 1 and 3-17, part of which I actually referred to a couple entries ago.
http://www.ibs.org/niv/passagesearch.php?passage_request=Colossians+3%3A+1-17&niv=yes&submit=Lookup&display_option=columns. It's a constant process.

Now that I’m back where I need to be, I didn’t see a point in staying off facebook. But I know that with finals rolling around, I may need to pull the plug again—or also if I start being swayed by other unnamed distractions. Further, I may end up deciding I just don’t need to be part of any online networks. At the least, I’ll keep this blog…Although what I may give up next is TBD, I don’t think it'll ever be washingtonpost.com…