Tools and Weapons

     I recently got sucked into the whirlpool of Face Book. It started off innocently enough with a desire to keep up on the birth announcements, meetings and play dates of the local MOPS group I belong to. I assumed it was a simple online bulletin board. I assumed wrong. My MOPS friends were soon joined by my Bible Study group, then my out of state family, then my old college friends and on and on it went. With each new ‘friend’ the amount of time it took to scroll through the home page grew and grew. It opened up a new can of worms for me. How much personal information is too much? Will I be perceived as a stalker if I make comments on other people’s posts too often? How much of my attention to other people’s lives is interest, how much nosiness? Where is the line drawn between a moment of catching up, and squandered precious moments where my attention should be spent elsewhere? These are questions my thoroughly Southern etiquette lessons did not address.

     I have to say that FB has been a great tool for me. I am able to keep my mother and sister’s in law (all out of state) updated on my children’s lives, our photos and the otherwise boring aspects of our daily lives. I can check messages from our MOPS group. I can keep up with my Bible Study groups. I can keep up with the kids in my church youth class. I can post links to my blog page on it. It is a blessing in those aspects. But I can also waste time, grow envious and be snoopy. The very tool that helps me, can hurt me.

     Isn’t that how it is with so many things in life? Our computers, our telephones, our checkbooks, our XM radio, our library cards… and the list goes on and on. The very things that can be of so much benefit can also be used as a weapon against God’s best for us.

     What I have chosen to do is this. I taped a paper message to my computer. It says this, “Is this God’s best and highest for me today?” It helps me stay grounded. It helps me stay focused. It helps me turn off the screen and walk away to the bread that needs to be made. The garden that needs to be weeded. The diapers that need to be washed. The children that need to be read to, walked with, held. The same message is on my fridge and inside my wallet. It keeps me from eating when I’m not hungry, spending when I’m not in need. It reminds me that these things in my hands are either tools, or weapons. It is not the computer, the fridge, or the wallet that decides. It’s me. It’s my hands. And thanks to my paper messages, Gods voice, I am making wiser choices.