As our evening as a family comes to a close, look at all of the technology that distracts us from just “being” together as a family. Mindy is searching for a pair of boots online, while Matt is on the other laptop replying to a few more emails. The kids have finished their homework, and Levi, the youngest, is playing Kinect Sports (because this is at least keeping him active, is our excuse) and the older kids are listening to their favorite country music songs on the iPad.
The noise and faces glued to screens brings this realization: we need to quit all technology by a certain time of night and just be together. Mindy asks everyone to turn off the technology, gather in the living room and “just talk.”
Puzzled looks on their faces, some rolling of the eyes. Levi, the youngest, swings a light saber, imitating the sounds it used to make before the batteries stopped working. How about one minute of silence? That doesn’t sound like too long, but with a 4-year-old still wound up, a minute seems like 10!
A sense of peace starts to permeate our living room and all of us together quiet down. Levi settles in Mindy’s lap and makes the sign of the cross to begin our prayer time together.
Do we take the time to encounter one another?
Advent is upon us, and most children have a Christmas wish list that more than likely includes technology. Technology in and of itself is not bad, but it’s become such a norm for our children and us adults, that we can’t detach ourselves from it. Constantly connected to our job, picking up our phone to Google the latest score of the football game, looking up the name of an actress that comes up during our dinner discussion, or checking our friends’ latest tweets distracts us from encountering one another. We think we are free. Rather, we are imprisoned by our technology, and we are unable to say no to it, to put it down and turn it off.
Free to do what? Free to love as God has called us to love. Truly encountering another person is giving others our full attention; not just simply hearing the other, but listening to them with intention. Being genuinely interested in who they are, where they are coming from and what is going on in their life.
May we encounter one another as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Our Lord. That is the ultimate encounter, where the King of the Universe, the Creator of All, comes in the form of a precious innocent baby and longs for us to pay attention to him above any and all other things.
Our challenge to all families, including our own, is to put down the technology; collect it prior to dinner and have the kids turn in their phones by 8 p.m. each night. Join us in turning it completely off from the last Sunday of Advent through Dec. 27. Day one and two may be difficult, but I’m guessing that an overwhelming sense of peace and unity will come about by just simply being together as a family.
We have been made a promise by Jesus Christ that wherever two or three are gathered in his name there he is, God in our mist. In the still, quiet and uninterrupted silence of our family, may we find peace listening for the voice of that little babe in the manger.
