Wants peace, won't put down phone.

"Hey Siri, define peace." Our phones do a lot, but they won't do that.

This is a phone. You may have seen one before.

It's your calendar and your calculator. It's your window into a thousand worlds.

A camera and notebook. A map and a search engine. A personal assistant and, well, let’s be honest, a companion that you touch and interact with more than any other individual in your life. 

It counts your steps and how many calories you’ve burned. It beeps to remind you to take your pills and to notify you when the package you ordered arrives at your door.

It times how long you boil your eggs in the morning and serves as your alarm clock to wake you up and drag your too-tired body out of bed.

You cast your morning work out video from it and listen to the morning podcast. It's in your hand and ear and in front of your eyes before your first coffee. And you've looked at it more than a dozen times before you crack open those hardboiled eggs and sprinkle them with pepper and salt. Or ketchup. Or hot sauce. 

Where you go it goes. 

You might text at traffic lights. Post funny memes from the bathroom. Comment between bites of your meal. Walk through grocery aisles while you loud-talk on speakerphone. (Please, don’t do that).

It's got all the apps you’ll ever need. To deliver your dinner. And your groceries. Hail a ride. Close the garage door. Hook up with a potential partner. Look up a word. Book a hotel. Leave a review. Read a book. Binge watch almost anything. Subscribe and save. 

And we haven't even mentioned TikTok or Instagram, where you can scroll and scroll for days. Where you can let yourself get lost in a labyrinth of funny pranks and hyped-up trends. Gawk at comments from friends you haven't seen since high school. 

Let your jaw drop at sensational news stories that, for some reason, even though you know better, you click and click and click again until your blood pressure is high and your blood sugar is low.  

Before you know it, it’s almost lunchtime and you shake out of your scroll-induced daze only to remember that this whole time you meant to open your Bible App to read the verse of the day.

But your mother has texted you twice now, and she's started to use emojis and—

This is my phone. 

And it goes everywhere with me and I go everywhere with it.  

I stand with it in lines at the bank or while I wait for the nurse to call my name. I consult it while watching movies, and eating dinner with family and friends.

When I’m in meetings at work. It's my connection to the world. And yet it disconnects me from the world, from myself and from God. Not always. But, if I’m honest, a lot.

It does most things for me, but it doesn't give me peace. 

This is a phone and you're allowed to turn it off.  Put it down. Leave it on its own.

When we stop. When we unplug. When we turn off our pixels and turn to the real light. We experience peace.

Let’s take a moment together. Right now.

To close our eyes. To take in a deep breath. Exhale. When was the last time you felt true, deep, quiet peace?

God keeps in perfect peace anyone and everyone who fixes their mind on Him.

Tune out the world a little more. Put down the phone. Tune in to God. 

You keep him in perfect peace
    whose mind is stayed on you,
    because he trusts in you. 

~ Isaiah 26:3

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