My Phone is Spontaneously Calling You

Today at church we talked about temptation, because we were looking at the assigned gospel text which was about Jesus being led out to into the wilderness and being tempted by the devil (Luke 4:1-13). 

I started thinking if there were a new TV show called "Temptation," you'd just assume it was some kind of racy show where people were almost cheating on their significant others (but somehow they'd make you feel like it was alright, and then you'd be mad about being tempted to think that it were okay). If I were going to create a new TV show called, “Temptation,” it would be about a girl who just made a new year's resolution to eat better, but then she's constantly put in situations where her friends are eating the largest, most delicious piece of cake, and they're really generous so they keep offering her pieces of it. That might be better for a mini-series or a Pixar short. 

Temptation for me is about instant gratification, and being distracted from what we actually want, need, or hope for, or from who we want to be. It's about the desire to walk away, even for a second, from the lasting things of life to the not lasting ones. Sometimes it's cake. Sometimes it's more damaging. In a more faith-ful perspective, temptation is the desire to walk away from God. For me, little or nothing is lasting besides God, so anytime I want to put my faith somewhere else, even for a second, that's temptation.   

When I'm in a situation where someone is talking about someone else with me, I can be tempted to join in. It might be because I'm already feeling uncomfortable about myself, or maybe that I just want to connect with the person talking with me, or that I'm feeling nervous about calling the other person out, or I get swept up in the temporary good feelings of passive aggressively venting, or some other reason. This is just an anxious habit (but it's also my conscience), but if I give into that temptation, I start getting really nervous that the person is standing right behind me, so I look over my shoulder every other second. The funnier thing that I do is check my phone a lot. Even though I've never owned a smart phone that has pocket-dialed someone, I'm convinced that my phone has spontaneously called the person that I've said something about and they've heard the whole conversation (I also check my phone a lot if I'm belting some song or talking to myself, and saying weird things that I'd be mortified to discover someone had heard... that doesn't totally apply to the rest of this post, but I wanted to include it). I take this as my red flag that I'm heading down a path that I'm not going to like. I don't know that I've ever said something unkind about someone else and felt good about it later. I mess up plenty, but that pit in my stomach usually tells me pretty quick when I've acted in a way that stands in contrast with who I want to be. 

Before I get all preachy, I'll stop there. :-) I guess what I'd want to leave with you all today is to choose the lasting and important things in your life. One way to do this is to randomly dial people in your phone and make sure that you like they you they're hearing. Or to not own a phone? Temptation is tricky.