Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Easter
This week I'm reading a book about a family - including teenagers - that decided to experiment with turning off their cell phones, computers, video games and other gadgets for a year. Whenever they needed to type something, they would arrange their schedule so they could use the computers at work, the library, or school. They learned to deal with boredom by becoming more creative. They learned that life could be a bit more still than they had been used to. At the end of the year, they picked up their technology again - but also made some rules that helped them keep some of the spirit of their year "off" - like having a tech-free day (Sunday) and having meals together without cell phones or other gadgets. They liked the balance they achieved of having the technology when they needed it, but also of connecting with the local people in their lives as much, or more than, the online people.
It's amazing to me to think that such rules would not have been needed ten or fifteen years ago - but they are. These rules are a way of staking a claim in regulating what is important in our lives. Our technological lives are important, but so are our families.
I think about all this especially in the context of today's gospel reading (John 14:27-31a), where Jesus says those words that are so familiar to us: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you." This is one of Jesus' farewell speeches before his ascension into heaven. Think of this passage as his "last speech" to his disciples, and so some of his most important words. Jesus knows that when he leaves his disciples, they will feel bereft, and so he says he leaves his own particular kind of peace.
The disciples' job, then, will be to learn to live in that kind of peace, rather than the worldly peace to which they are accustomed. In the Acts passage for today (Acts 14:19-28) we see an example of how to live into that peace. Paul is stoned to death - they think - but the disciples get him back on his feet. This astonishing feat, however, is equaled by the next part, where we see that THE NEXT DAY, Paul is off on his travels again, witnessing to the reign of God. “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God," they proclaim. Christian peace does not mean some kind of bland placidity where nothing happens to a person; Christian peace instead means that Jesus enters into our lives, even with all our suffering and hardships and asks us not to worry, in spite of it all, but to persevere in our faith in God.
What does this mean in relation to all our technology use? I wonder if sometimes our use of technology is a means of trying to create a placid, supposedly peaceful world. In our day, is the worldly peace perhaps this technological peace? We can go online, or go to video games, and escape a little bit. My concern is that when we do that, we don't allow ourselves to receive Jesus' peace instead. Jesus gives us his peace as a gift; he means that peace as a way of dealing with the sorrow as well as the joy of our lives.
Today, let us reflect on the kinds of worldly peace we may be seeking instead of seeking Jesus' peace - and let us figure ways of inviting Jesus' peace into our lives.
- Jana M. Bennett