I think it’s fair to say that many of us who write our own blogs also read a lot of blogs. We might also spend a fair amount of time on twitter. We might also waste a bit of time on facebook. And before we know it, we might find ourselves wondering how it got to be 1am and we still haven’t put the dinner dishes away.

And by we, I mean me.

I spend entirely too much time online. It's what a call a neutral addiction. It's not hurting anyone - I'm not flying into a drunk rage or throwing my life away or getting arrested. I'm just quietly wasting lots and lots of time.

I have a love-hate relationship with social media. It has certainly expanded my worldview and made me feel a part of a broader community of moms. I have never had that sense of isolation as a mom that I heard my mother’s generation talk about. Despite the fact that some days I don’t ever make it out of my pj’s, I still feel like I get to do a little socializing every night on facebook. When my kids go down for a nap, I can catch up on my reader to see what my friends are doing, or relate to an anecdote from someone else in a similar lifestage. I can blog about my struggles with choosing a minivan, or dealing with the school bully, or my inability to remember my assigned snack day in the classroom, and the comments often feel like my very own community of women, propping me up and guiding me along the journey.  It's also provided me with an amazing community of adoptive moms, with families that look like mine.  I may not see them every day, but I know they are out there, and I get to keep up with them on facebook and twitter.

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Leave it to a group of Jewish hipsters to remind us Christians how important it is to observe the Sabbath for what it is: a day set apart for the Lord.

Shabbat--the Hebrew for Sabbath--is big with Jews, some would say the biggest Jewish holiday of them all. For Jews, Shabbat begins on Friday evening at sunset and ends on Saturday night "when three stars are visible in the sky." On Shabbat, Jews "remember that God created the world and then rested from His labors" (Genesis 2:2). Shabbat is considered a festive day to pray, read, eat, drink wine, spend time with family and friends, and basically rest.

But Shabbat is Jewish, right? So what's that to the rest of us? As it turns out, plenty. And it took a bunch of Jewish artists, thought-leaders and tastemakers operating under the banner Reboot to tell us Gentiles what we're missing. In their search for "a modern way to observe a weekly day of rest," the folks at Reboot created the "Sabbath Manifesto" as "a creative project designed to slow down our lives in an increasingly hectic world." 

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Shifting pace stinks. I have been shifting gears far too much recently. And I bet you have too. That is why I think it is crucial that we find a new gear for discussing spirituality. So today, on Twitter’s Follow #Friday (for you Twitter virgins, the # sign is Twitter lingo), I am wondering who we should follow. Who should we look to for hope when gears change, the economy is rearranged, and life is certainly not the same? (Yep, I can rhyme.)

And what if Jesus was on Twitter? Would we Follow #Friday him?

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In our world of celebrity gazing and personal idolatry, it’s not surprising that a social networking tool such as Twitter (which feeds our appetite for immediacy) would be all the craze. If you haven’t heard by now, Twitter has officially jumped the shark and basically serves three functions for the typical user:

1.    Allows you to follow friends, strangers or celebrities (such as Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears, Shaquille O’Neal, Stephen Colbert, etc.) on a hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute basis
2.    You can build your business, organization or your personal brand by following the right people or just following an ungodly amount of people
3.    You can create an identity by posting such profound or awesome tweets that you become a legend in the Twitterverse

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I wrote a new technology piece in Relevant magazine’s September/October issue, entitled “Short Attention Span Faith.” You can read the whole thing by clicking here, but here’s a short little excerpt:

Unsurprisingly, this frenzied, obsessive-compulsive proclivity toward being digital busybodies has deleterious effects on Christian disciplines like Bible study and prayer. How do we justify sitting down and praying for an hour when there are Hulu videos to browse, “What Ninja Turtle are you?” quizzes to take, and online “community” to cultivate? If we’re not wired, plugged-in, and communicating with the world at all times, it seems like such a waste of time…

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One day I’m going to travel to a monastery on some remote mountaintop and just be still for a whole week. If you were a gambling man or woman, it would be smart to bet that I wouldn’t make it that long. Going two days without any disruption of any kind sounds amazing, but I think my attempt at respite would be met by delirium. You see, it hasn’t been quiet in my little world for a long time.

It has a lot to do with having little toddlers running around, but even with the absence of miniature me’s and their shenanigans, I would have no problem busying myself. See, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we live in a very loud, busy, claustrophobic-inducing culture.

I ride the New York City subways everyday, which means at any moment I could get a rude shoulder to the chin, a beggar panhandling for a dollar or if I’m lucky, a seat crammed in the corner by the shrieking brakes.

My default position is to insert white earbuds in while Coldplay attempts to take me to an ethereal place. It works for a song or two, but the hustle and bustle of the day overwhelms even the best stanzas.

Inserted into the craziness of the day are things that never existed a decade ago: Blackberries, iPhones, Facebook updates, Twitter tweets,RSS feeds, Hulu, TiVo, spam mail, text messaging. With all these things competing for your precious time, is it any surprise that none of us have time to feed the soul? As Socrates said famously, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”

My blog has a simple mission: to observe how faith intersects with the other parts of our lives. Most of the time it’ll be simple observations, but hopefully, once in a while there will be some level of profundity. Either way, I’m happy to be a part of this community. Here’s to being a part of your intersection. 

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