By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever been so focused on your cell phone for such a long time that your neck feels positively crunchy and stiff, like you can’t move it properly?
Several years ago, I took my teenaged son to the chiropractor, and X-rays revealed his spine at the very top, at his neck, was bending forward. The chiropractor dubbed it “text neck,” and he said he sees it a lot in his patients. Since the advent of smartphones, so many people spend a significant amount of time inclined toward their phones … to the point that their spines are actually shifting! The solution—besides, in his opinion, chiropractic care—is to retrain your body not to look down at your phone so much, to intentionally train your gaze forward and even upward so your neck is able to swivel back to its natural state and not become so crooked.
It’s not just our necks and overall spines that get out of alignment when we are hunched over. Being so inward-focused is not a good thing for our hearts, our minds, or our souls, either. We start to get crooked and out of alignment with God our Father and with the fire of the Holy Spirit that burns inside us.
As it is with text neck, the solution is retraining ourselves, getting back into alignment, and we can do that by steering our focus upward and outward. Instead of looking within, we can be looking around us, at the world and the people who need our love and our care and our mercy. We can look upward, at the Lord and all of this beautiful creation all around us
Sometimes it’s good to look within. We need time and introspection to tend to ourselves, our soul, and sometimes we need to analyze and assess where we are in life and in our faith. It’s not a bad thing. What’s bad is too much of that introspection, too much self-focus.
And make no mistake: “Self” doesn’t just apply to the individual self. It also applies to those people and interests we hold dear, from our family and friends to our jobs and hobbies. There is a whole wide world around us that needs our attention, too.
Proverbs 19:21 reminds us, “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails,” while Colossians 3:2 urges, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (NIV). Romans 12:2 proclaims, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
If you’re not accustomed to it, it can be challenging to train our brains away from the self, to train our gaze away from our personal concerns. But like any habit, it’s one that gets easier over time, and one that brings great joy and fulfillment.
Try it. Look within and without, knowing that as you open your heart and turn your life completely over God, he’ll use you in unimaginably beautiful ways.
Amen. Thanks be to God!~
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