Every Sunday morning, I get a notifications on my phone and on my laptop about my screen time usage. It’s an automated notification that Apple has installed on its products to keep you aware of how much time you really are spending on your devices, and it’s a notification that I’d like to think has a good heart behind it - accountability.
Usually, the notification coming through on my phone gets me down. It always tells me me I’ve been on my phone way longer than I’d like to have been and way longer than it seems.
Typically, I sit around the 90 minutes/day mark of phone screen time. That’s hard to comprehend when I imagine myself sitting, staring at my phone for that many consecutive minutes, but I suppose when one stretches out all of the times the check their device, text people back, etc., the time adds up.
I was thinking about these notifications and my phone usage this morning when I read the final verse from John’s first letter in the Bible: “Keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.”
This verse got me thinking because I know if I had a ‘spiritual time usage’ notification on my person each week tracking the amount of time I read, prayed or participated in a ministry or another spiritual discipline, it wouldn’t add up to near the amount of screen usage time I have.
For a Christian, that’s convicting.
So, I’m going to work a little harder to spread out more ‘spiritual time’ throughout my day… just as I do my phone usage.
-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: Someone should invent a spiritual time usage notification that’s not on the Bible app.