Reading Psalm 4 this morning, because it’s the 4th, and this is what caught my eye:
In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.
Did you catch that? Search your hearts…
…YOUR…
hearts…
I’ve been kind of over social media lately.
Especially in the last 48 hours since the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Geez. Can ANYONE please talk about anything else?! Please?!
It’s SO. MUCH. NOISE.
AND it’s an election year, so the social media noise is only going to get worse. Yay for that.
I just recently watched a social media train wreck unfold across my Facebook feed as a scorned boyfriend spelled out errrthang, I mean ERRRTHANG, that his girlfriend (who, turns out, wasn’t really his girlfriend) had done to him, ALL the details, posting pics of her, pics of the other man, paragraph upon paragraph all posted at 3am, naturally, because he was apparently drunk, and angry Facebook rants always seems like a good idea when it’s 3am and you’re drunk.
So. Much. Noise.
Bet the next morning when the booze wore off, he wished he had just laid in bed, searched his own heart, and been silent.
I bet she wishes that, too.
I love the way The Message version of the Bible says it:
Complain if you must, but don’t lash out. Keep your mouth shut, and let your heart do the talking. Build your case before God and wait for his verdict.
I may not be a 3am angry Facebook-posting, dirty-laundry-sharing drunk (I’m not an angry drunk at ALL, thank goodness… I’m more of an “everything’s hilarious, especially ME, and I can REALLY dance” drunk, but I digress) …
…but I may have been known to lash out in a poorly-thought-out text message, at least once in my life.
It would have been a good time to lie in bed and search MY OWN heart, be SILENT, and let God sort this mess out.
I mean, how much better would social media, and THE WORLD, be, if we would all just be silent, at least sometimes? Maybe just a little more?
Or at least slower to take our rants to social media, especially the angry ones.
Slower, because we’ve taken a minute to lie in bed, silently search our own hearts, and talk to God about it first.
Even when someone has done you wrong, or if you’ve only imagined that they’ve done you wrong. Even when Shakira is showing too much skin and JLo is working the stripper pole and, by gosh, kids are watching.
Hush.
Search YOUR heart (because I promise you, YOU have some sins in your OWN heart), be silent, and take the rest to God.
I’m working on that.