05/06/2026
So many quips and quotes...
So little time to preach
I wonder what Mary and Martha’s phones might look like:
- Martha = the open browser with 27 tabs
- Mary = the single window that matters
- Psalm 46 = God saying, “Close the tabs.”
Martha says to Jesus, “Tell her to help me.”
She wants Jesus to pull Mary away from his feet.
And isn’t that exactly what distraction does?
It doesn’t just make us busy—it pulls us away from the presence of Christ and makes that feel justified.
Phones are no longer tools—they are environments
They function as:
- identity shapers
- attention directors
- emotional regulators
- meaning-makers
What would it take to recover a more sane use of technology, a more reflective lifestyle? These practices might begin to take us there:
- Silence (Psalm 46)
- Single-focus attention (Mary)
- Embodied presence
- Unhurried relationships
- Deep reading / reflection
“We don’t need to abandon our phones.
But we may need to relearn how to put them in their proper place.”
Maybe we’d start with…
- no phone at meals
- no phone in the first 10 minutes of the day
- intentional “quiet spaces”—like no phone in a waiting room, instead learn to wait, use those moments to go through the most important people in your life, one by one, and ask how you might bring a little extra light, energy, joy to them in the coming day or days.
One author put it this way: “We’re not rejecting technology—we’re refusing to let it train our souls more than Christ does.”
Have you noticed that Museums have slowly removed benches in many galleries? The reason is that people don’t linger anymore. They move, snap, scroll, move on. Art is no longer something you behold. It’s something you capture and leave. If you take that thought and apply it to our day to day “We have become tourists in our own lives—moving quickly, documenting everything, but rarely staying long enough to actually experience it.”
Technology can really bless our lives, but if we aren’t careful it can just as easily rob us of the spiritual strength and resilience that makes us faithful followers of Jesus. As Mad-Eye Moody was fond of saying in the Harry Potter series, “Constant Vigilance!” That’s why this amazing new world at our finger tips requires from us.
Archived Posts
One More Thing About Becoming Wholly Human
I was talking Sunday about the work of Hare and Woods and their idea of ‘the survival of the friendliest.’ Essentially, they conclude that “our greatest evolutionary advantage wasn't that we could do everything ourselves. It was that we could do things together.”
Here’s a preview of our congregation’s Core Values
In the coming weeks we will be exploring the importance of presence, prayers, gifts, service, witness, and growth in grace. These are at the heart of what we commit to when we join a Wesleyan grace-led church like ours. But we choose to broaden them out and state them in a new way…
The Biblical prayer we don’t know what to do with
Psalm 137 is written by people who have experienced catastrophic loss.
They have been conquered...
Patience and Trust
Sunday, in my benediction (which traditional folks did not hear) I talked about the Marshmallow Test. The original results of that test with children was that those who could delay gratification did better in life than those who could not.
Gandhi and the Sugar
I wasn’t preaching Sunday, Reverend Jackie Chandler was. And she talked about the power of influence you get when you practice what you preach. This famous illustration came to mind. It fits Jackie’s points quite well. Enjoy!
Not Just for Parents
Our current sermon series is about How To Talk Parent, but it doesn’t require any of us to be parents to appreciate the bits of wisdom OUR parents shared with us growing up.
If Not Higher
Here’s a story I wanted to use when talking about ‘what you do when no one is looking’ yesterday. It’s a wonderful illustration of what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:1-6—do what you do because of who you want to be, not so that others will take notice and praise you.