Another alarm has sounded that our smartphones are not simply innovative devices meant to improve our lives, but instead are little tools that have been intentionally designed to keep us focused on our screens. Globe and Mail journalist Eric Andrew-Gee says,

“The evidence is there, cold and hard, in a growing body of research by psychiatrists, neuroscientists, marketers and public health experts. What these people say – and what their research shows – is that smartphones are causing real damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, reduced brain power, declines in work-life balance and hours less of family time.”

While this article focuses primarily on the social effects, it should all the more so make us consider what our phones our doing to our spiritual lives. We include a fitting quote by Second Reformation minister William Teellinck, in a sermon titled, Redeeming the Time:

“It is well for us to consider each hour of life permitted to us as a special gift, bestowed upon us in mercy by the great God for our profit…and the deep consideration of what we owe to God and Christ in His service, and how shamefully neglectful we have been hitherto, should cause us in justice to redeem our time with all diligence.”