Today's Encouragement

Ghosting the Phone to Get With God

Karen Ehman

“My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” Psalm 42:2 (NIV)

I lazily reached my arm across the nightstand beside me to silence the clanging alarm. A retro battery-operated clock, its classic bell tone coaxes me each morning out of a deep sleep and sends me on to my morning routine …

Shower. Dress. Check to make sure my son hasn’t overslept. Make the bed. Start the coffee maker and a load of laundry. Grab some java and head into my home office.


My hope is that, once I am comfortably seated at my desk, the next half-hour or so of my daybreak ritual will follow this progression: I’ll flip open my Bible, grab an adorable journal and a smooth-writing pen and connect with my Creator, stopping only to sip coconut-mocha coffee from my whimsical pale pink mug.

I wish I could say this is how the morning scenario unfolds every day, but I’d be fibbing. More often than I’d care to admit, it looks a bit like this:

The alarm sounds. I shut it off, but then I spy my cell phone. It is then that the pull begins — not physically magnetic, but strong nonetheless. It tugs on my heart and swallows my time.

“Just a quick check to see if I have any text messages,” I reason to myself. Then, the yank begins. Every tap. Each new swipe. They all lure me deeper into the black hole of social media, making empty promises. “You simply must read that intriguing news piece on Twitter … the one with the captivating headline. Can’t start the day off right without it.” Or, my clicking catapults me down a trail of curiosity when I notice an old friend’s family update on Instagram or a Facebook ad for a product that promises to make my life more organized, exciting or Pinterest-y.

Glancing at the top of my phone, I notice the time. “Well, that’s 23 minutes I’ll never get back!” Now behind from the get-go, I must let go of any hopes I had for carving out a slice of my morning to meet with God.

Psalm 42:2 states, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?"

My soul thirsts for God. We might read that as a wish — we wish we had that kind of longing for the Lord. However, if read in a straightforward manner, we can take it as fact: The soul of a believer thirsts for God. Sadly, we often try to quench that dryness with trivial pursuits like phone tapping. Yet we still experience a parched soul.

The last phrase of the verse tosses a question into the mix: When can I go meet with God? Well? Let’s take this as our cue to answer that inquiry. When can you go meet with God?

Meeting with the Lord doesn’t have to be in a legalistic manner, surmising there is something magical about a pre-dawn meeting. Perhaps the best time for a mom of littles is during naptime. Maybe another working woman’s lunch break affords the best chunk of time when she can shut off the phone and flip open the Bible. You might even be a “curl up in my fuzzy jammies before turning in for the night” kind of girl who is most attentive at bedtime.

No matter what works best for you, make time today to go meet with God. Ghost your phone. Turn it back on only when it is truly needed. Your relationship with Jesus will grow stronger because of it, and your gadget won’t even notice you’re gone.