Your Values and Gods Will

Something happened recently that I would never have expected, I closed down my Twitter account, and made my LinkedIn account dormant to the point of serving only as an online business card. I have been off Facebook for several years. Usually during Lent I give up social media so that I can use that to spend more time with the Lord. But being this is an election year, I decided that after Memorial Day I would stay off the ‘feed’ until Labor Day, and then only lurk but not interact until after Election Day.

As a Catholic man I strive to do God’s will. The best description that I’ve heard of this is that God’s will is that we depend on him. Sometimes, to depend on God, I have to remove the messages bombarding me from our over saturated information culture. Because the things I listen to contribute to my world view, and thus over time become my values.

The thing I have learned about removing yourself from social media is that you have to find something else to use that time with or you get the urge to go back on the feed ... yes, like an addiction. So this time I prayed for the Holy Spirit to show me God’s will how I should fill this time. The thing that kept coming back to me from multiple sources was to just have the mission to focus on God and His will.

This reminded me that something I haven’t though much recently is that to live mission means to eat, breathe, and sleep mission. So I applied this towards my focus on God and His will – to eat and breathe, and sleep, depending on God.

I then organized the devotionals that I would spend time with, the (online) writers or publications I would pull information from, and concentrate more on the daily readings and what each message is saying about what God wants of me or how I should respond. In a nutshell, to slow down and see more of the world around me and how God is at work through me, and to meet Him in that work.

A funny thing happened. I started to realize how the narrative in my own head was from the many opinions that I collected on social media and the like, short of the long, and how once this was removed my own thoughts started to emerge and come to the surface. Thus when I saw how much my thoughts were suppressed, and then how much being bathed in the love of God filled the void in my heart that much more, I deleted my social media accounts.

I previously did not spend much time on social media, maybe 10 hours a week, but in looking for information about art and photography, and the Church and its people, slowly but surly I was also sucked into the politics, business, and bureaucracy, so to speak. You see, through this I have learned how our world view over time determines our values, and thus determines how much we depend on God or not, and how we eat, breathe, and sleep His will for our lives.

Thanks for Reading.

Frank J Casella


Photo: Cloud Dance Above The Trees - Color Photograph Copyright 2020 Frank J Casella


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