"What is that in your hand?"

 

“Dad,” my son Vincent told me.  “I have come up with a fun game for children to play while their parents are shopping.”

“What’s that?”  I asked him.

“They can count how many cell phones they see,” my eldest son told me.  “I’m talk about the ones that are in people’s hands,” he clarified.  “Not the ones that are on display for sale.”

“That sounds like a boring game,” his younger brother put in.

“I was with Mom in Target today,” Vincent said.  “I saw thirty cell phones in people’s hands during our time in there.”

“It’s a sign of a good education,” I said.  “You are able to count that high without taking off your shoes and socks.  When I was your age, I wore flip flops everywhere simply so that I could get to twenty without breaking a sweat.”

The cell phone conversation stayed with me.  I began to think of Moses coming upon a Burning Bush in the desert.  After God called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses expressed doubts about his ability. 

It was then that God asked Moses a question.  “What is that in your hand?”

Moses was holding a staff and God told him to throw it down.  It immediately became a snake – a sign from God of Moses’ divine calling.

If it had been a 21^st Century American standing before the burning bush and God had asked the same question, the answer would have been a smart phone.  Even when people are with friends, they seem to have their phones out – checking on a variety of statuses and replies.

Smart phones are powerful technology.  They have housed within their slender frames telephones, cameras, contact lists, and music libraries.  They have an always on connection to both e mail and the internet.

I am not against technology.  It makes life easier in many ways.  I even own a smart phone and I use it regularly.  If my phone gives up the ghost someday, I’m sure I will replace it in short order.  I have come to depend on it enough that I could not easily go back to a old style flip phone.

It is interesting that God told Moses to throw down his staff.  Certainly an eighty-year-old shepherd could be forgiven if he depended on his staff more than a little for balance and support.

Maybe God was telling Moses that he needed to learn where his source of strength truly was.  Perhaps Moses needed to lean on God more than he ever had his rod, to lead a great (and greatly complaining) people out of Egypt.

It feels to me as though God is asking 21^st century Christians to do the same thing – to throw down their phones.  Well, being the merciful God He is and understanding the cost of replacing a cracked phone screen, He might ask us to place the phone gently on the ground.

“This thing you hold in your hand,” He tells us.  “It is a tool – a device that you are leaning on.  I want you put it down and for a long moment focus only on me.  You will come to realize that you need me far more than that piece of electronics that feels so important to you.”

What is that in your hand?

It is a tool.  It is a way of maintaining tenuous relationships with distant friends.  At times, it is an impediment to maintaining relationships with people close at hand.

Most important is the question of whether these phones stand in the way of our relationship with our Heavenly Father.  How long can you pray without checking your phone?  Does meditating feel boring compared to checking the latest post on social media?

When we stand before the bush in flame, we hear a divine voice speaking to us.  It asks again, “What is that in your hand?”  Then it tells us to throw it down on the ground.

Anything that stands in the way of us relying wholly on God must be stripped away.

Even if that thing is something as amazing as the technology found in a smart phone.