The Lord wants our ears, and He wants them first and foremost. He wants the first whisper in the morning and the leading thought throughout our busy days. He promises He can do much more than we could ever ask or imagine through those who lean in early and often to listen to His Word enlightened by His Spirit.

Isaiah 50:4. The Lord has given me the tongue of a disciple that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens me morning by morning, He awakens my ear to listen as a disciple. 

It sounds so easy. But this world is loud and lies are loud. As if it were not enough that we have a cunning Enemy who speaks lie as his native tongue (John 8:44) , we also have a flesh all too eager to listen to sugar-coated empty promises. Good liars (an oxymoron, to be sure) are convincing and cunning, and our Enemy is the best.

I realized this past week that in addition to the war of voices, actual and metaphorical, already being waged in my head, I had been inviting hundreds upon hundreds of other voices into the party.

Because I can almost claim luddite status, only the antiquated old lady named Facebook has been my social media companion for quite some time. We have had an intermittent relationship, but because she is a persistent hag who seems to follow you even when you try to leave her, we always end up back in some sort of companionship.

Of late, however, she had become louder and more demanding of my time, luring me away from people and towards pixelated images of people. I found myself filling crevices of time with the simultaneously mind-numbing and mind-stimulating activity of scrolling news feeds. I noticed a subtle shift of my focus and attention away from the people God has placed right in front of me and toward the network of virtual pictures, words and people.

Social media had become a cacophony that was clamoring louder and louder, competing with the still, quiet voice of Truth from my Savior.

Amy Carmichael, one of my heroes of the faith, wrote the following advice to a young person just beginning in a new work.

“Fill up the crevices of time with the things that matter most. This will cost something, but it is worth it. ‘Seek ye My face. My heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.’ No one of us is of much use who does not truly want to learn what it means to pray and listen and definitely choose the life that is hid with Christ in God.”

God convicted me through Isaiah 50:4 to reclaim unto Christ the crevices of my time into which social media had been creeping.

Allow me to be clear, social media is not evil, and my use of it was not excessive. It was, however, creeping into crevices of my heart and cooling my affection for Christ.

A mind can only contain so much information, hold so many thoughts, process so many images. Over the past few months, my heart and soul have become inundated by lots that are not mine and portions that were apportioned for me.

It is much easier to stay in my lot when I am not opening up a virtual clothesline in which all of your lots appear before me. It’s not that I don’t care about my friends and family or their lives, it is just that I am now forced to care in a pace and on a plane that is different.

How sweet it has been to be free from being a mere scroll away from a false sense of connection that had begun pulling me away from the flesh and blood people right under my feet and on my block. Being unable to get affirmation through likes and comments, I have been forced to run to the Eternal One in whom I am invited to find an unshakeable and unchanging confidence and identity.

I thought this indefinite leave of absence from the social media world would feel like a fast, but, so far, it has honestly more resembled a feast. A deeper feeding on God’s Word and His companionship, a sweeter dining upon the day-to-day delicacies of chaotic family life.

What fills the crevices of your days? What is leaking into the cracks of your heart?

May we, through the Spirit’s leading and empowerment, be women who are willing to fight to let Christ fill up the crevices our days and lives and thoughts.