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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: PHONE (11/10/16)
Margin

My first call on a mobile phone took place on the steps of a store that sold electrical goods. It was in the town of Termini Imerese, in Italy, where I lived and worked at the time. It was around 1998 and there was no reception in the store so I had to go outside. I had borrowed it from my friend, an American, who was well up on modern gadgetry like computers, faxes and mobile phones.

Harry assured me that all I had to do was call the number and wait to conduct my conversation in the normal way. I remember feeling conspicuous and uncomfortable. I remember the passers-by, staring at this oddity. They may well have been thinking, ‘How trendy. Wish I could do that,’ but that was the farthest thing from my mind. It was functional. I needed to speak to someone in another city and that was the quickest way to do it.

Since that first encounter with mobile phone technology, I have come a long way. I have owned a number of mobile phones, faxes and computers and even have a qualification in the field. They have become a part of my everyday life, so much so that, if I leave my mobile phone at home, it has become a point of domestic dispute.

But with all my frenetic lifestyle of telecommunications where I am contactable all day every day, I wonder if I have lost something. Privacy. Quietness. Solitude. The chance to be alone with my thoughts and with my God. The possibility of refreshing my mind and slaking my thirsty soul with the goodness of His peace.

Richard Swenson is the author of a book called a Minute of Margin. It was a gift to me from my wife about ten years ago at Christmas. It has been exactly that; a gift to my life. In his opening phrase, he says this, ‘Margin is like oxygen – everybody needs some.’ Margin is important in so many aspects of life and it’s a place where I have fallen many times. Not having enough financial margin to get through the month; not enough spiritual margin, scrounging time with my Saviour instead of resting without care in the bliss of His presence; not enough margin of time to ‘nourish and cherish’ my wife as the Scriptures command. ‘Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will rise up on wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint.’ This is a lesson for life I keep having to learn.

Pushing ourselves to the limit all the time goes against how we are designed. The Lord was found to be walking in the cool of the evening in the Garden of Eden. On that occasion, it was not a pleasant end, but it shows that He knows how to take time out. Gardens, mountains and seas have been a part of Scripture from the beginning. They are places of solitude, restoration and rest. They are places of rediscovering that which has been taken from us in our quest for progress and a better quality of life. Jesus knew it. We would do well to learn it too.
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Wendy Godwin
11/21/16
I have often wondered what it would be like to put my cell phone away and ignore it for a certain period of time every day. You have also made me think about needing a margin and about how I feel like the mountains are a place I can connect to God more easily. You have given me much to think about. Thank you.