Lessons from WiFilessness

One of my favorite books on spiritual formation is Adele Calhoun’s book The
Spiritual
Disciplines Handbook. One of the disciples she has in the book is “unplugging.” That is discipline I take advantage of every once in a while. It is good to unplug from email, phone, social media, instant news and entertainment.

However, I do like to do it on my own terms. I like to choose when, and where, and for how long. Not so this weekend. God in His providence chose for me. Some hardware issue has occurred that will require a visit from Comcast to fix—and the soonest appointment they had was Monday.

We don’t have cable TV, and my ancient house is a Bermuda triangle that sucks cell phone signal into some parallel dimension. Any video outside of DVDs requires internet. For our phones to work, we need internet. So when God Himself decides to unplug us, we are very unplugged indeed.

One of the ways I like to spend my quiet time is listening to Max MacLean read the Bible through an app on my phone. I am missing that.

I like having Christian music streamed by my Amazon Echo. I am missing that. Without internet Alexa (my Echo) is reduced to a useless tube that takes up space on the pie safe in our sitting room.

Contemplating my Wi-Fi depravity and its subsequent impact on my favorite spiritual practices, God reminded me of a little Fénelon.

Sometimes in this life of faith God will remove His blessings from you. But remember that He knows how and when to replace them…God will see to it that manna falls again from Heaven in the midst of the dessert, before His children lack any good thing (from “Letter 14, Pure Faith Sees God Alone” in Let Go).

How true. And He has been. I read a great book, Need You Now: A Story of Hope by Tiffany Lee (aka the Christian artist Plumb, who I think is freakishly awesome). I spent time in quiet meditation and prayer. And, of course, took the time to write this post. How good it is that God has so many ways of ministering to us. And when He takes some ways away for a season, it reminds us not to depend on our preferred disciplines, but on Him.