Beholding - Thoughts From Our Winter Retreat

Still Life Flowers in Vase, by Maggie Laubser

Last year we held our first Winter Retreat! It was a very special time for everyone present and we wanted to share some of our thoughts with those who couldn't make it. The following post is the first of the two talks given on the theme of Beholding and Becoming.

This talk came about from a reading plan I set for myself earlier this year. As we at Alveary Grove began to think about hosting this retreat I mentioned that I was planning on this reading plan and that perhaps I could share my findings with you all at some point in the day. And so this is how I came to be standing here. It has been a lot of effort from us all to get to this point and we have all been praying for you all that this day would be a wonderful day of refreshment and encouragement.

 So the two books I mentioned were Hannah Anderson’s All That’s Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment, and Tony Reinke’s: Competing Spectacles – Treasuring Christ in the Media Age. As I began to write it became clear that there is so much to unpack when it comes to media of all kinds – hence there being whole books about - so instead of trying to talk about everything very quickly, I decided to focus on one issue that kept coming up and that is today’s focus which is the relationship between beholding and becoming. And how the things we give our attention can shape us for better or for worse.

As we begin I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the word beholding does not just mean to look at, it also means that the thing we are looking at is impressive and worthy.

You may know that Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm in the Bible: it has 176 verses, and so is significantly longer than any of the others. It is also notably poetic. In its original language of Hebrew, the Psalm is comprised of 22 stanzas, each starting with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and it is a celebration of God’s word - a love song if you like, a long love song to His word. You’re likely most familiar with verse 105, which says, ‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.’ Today, as we consider beholding, and worthiness, we are going to turn our attention to verse 37, which reads, "Keep my eyes from worthless things, preserve my life according to your word."

 As a side note, when I refer to tech and media today I am thinking about all the things that come to us that are more of a recreational offering than a productive offering, so everything from Facebook scrolling to Tiktoks, Youtube shorts and longs, Pinterest, Instagram, blogs, shopping, there are so many now, but it’s the more light information/leisure/entertainment content I’m thinking of – although some of the principles I’ll be talking about can apply to what we would consider productive media as well.

In the way of structure, we are going to begin by orienting ourselves historically – and take some time to look at the unique situation we find ourselves in today with regards to technology.  I’ll then take you through a few things we need to be cautious of, when we consider how social media and the like tries to be worthy or our time and, worthy or not, we will also have a look at why it is often so successful in capturing our attention.

Then we are going to pause on the tech talk and look at how even tech free lives are at risk of being full of worthless things. And then we’ll wrap up with what the Scriptures have to say about what we should be giving our attention to. Later in the day Angelique will lead us through some of the practices of how to better align our days with our desires.

Okay let’s get started!

1.    Where we are and why it matters

In All That’s Good, Hannah Anderson describes our current age like this, "In a single day, I can encounter more data, more opinions, and more ideas than my grandmother did in an entire lifetime." Just think about that for a minute: a full lifetime worth of content, in one day! And that is our lived reality. Just think about your morning, how many ideas have been fed to you so far? We live in a time that is marked by the consuming of content. Our modern tech has allowed other people’s thoughts (in the form of words and images) to take on an almost omnipresent role in our lives. We are rarely left alone to our own thoughts, or perhaps more importantly, to order our thoughts about what we have been exposed to, before swiping on to the next thing. One of the pitfalls of this has been the loss of ability, or even the practice at all, of thoughtfulness, and considering whether the ideas we are exposed to are, firstly, true and, secondly, even worth thinking about. It is part of why Hannah’s books is called ‘Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment’  I’m sure you have had the experience that I have of some funny little comment on a post from someone you may not even know playing on your mind for ages, bouncing around your thoughts, taking up all that time, but being of absolutely no value or real consequence in your life. When we rush through content, even good content, we remove from ourselves the opportunity to thoughtfully consider things, and along with stunting our brains’ ability to grow in reason, we become susceptible to being easily convinced of things that sound kind of true. We become vulnerable to being won over be a good speaker rather than good words. We run the risk of becoming like those described in Ephesians 4:24 who are, "tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming."

Social media, and actually the Internet in general, seems to be a place where worthless thoughts thrive. These worthless things get attention, then that attention is monetized, so much so that we now have a situation where creating worthless ideas actually becomes lucrative, and apart from that being a sad situation in and of itself, the cherry on top is that these ideas become promoted as worthy and impressive. Now there is nothing new about worthless things vying for our attention – which is why we have even the screen free psalmist cautioning against it, but what is unique for us is the ability to get these ideas and the rate at which this ability has become a part of our daily life.

Because this tech has developed so quickly, it has meant that a lot of the time the use of it has become firmly established in our lives before we have even taken the time to question whether or not it should be. And while technology does change, fads do come and go, (electricity comes and goes) I think it is fair to say that the technology that brings and replaces content at this rapid pace is here to stay.  Which why it is so important that we do take a break today and spend some serious time considering what it is doing to us, so that we can grow in discernment and see how we might learn to embrace the good and run far and fast from the bad.

Still Life With Roses, by Irma Stern

2. Sawdust ideas

Okay, history lesson over. The first caution I want to bring to you is for us to think about this endemic of worthless content.  Our brains are capable of consuming vast amounts of content and engaging with a myriad of ideas, they can reach high and lofty ideas about God and marvel at the depths and complexities of his world, but most of the time, the content that flashes before our eyes is not directing us to this. Charlotte Mason never saw a smart phone, but she had a lot to say about ideas. In one of her well known quotes she says that "the mind is capable of dealing with only one kind of food, it lives and grows and is nourished upon ideas only." She continues with, "Mere information is to a meal as sawdust to the body." She is of course speaking about education and dull text books, but I think the same can be said for the type of content that regularly comes our way.

Sawdust: isn’t that such a perfect analogy for the ideas we are fed? You could eat sawdust, and depending on the wood you may even be able to have it pass through your body without harm, and I think it could even give you the feeling of being full, but as to nutrition? Well, nothing. Live on a diet of sawdust for a few days and you may find yourself no longer living.  It is a fitting word to describe what the ideas we are most often fed do to us. They may give us a feeling of being full, because they fill our time and do give us something to think about. But our minds are not replenished, nourished, or satisfied. They hunger for more.

Which leads me to my next point, and second caution.

3. Insatiable Hunger

And that is that we are insatiable. We have been created to consume, with eyes that see, ears that hear, and minds that can perceive wonderful things.  I like to think that we have been made this way because we have a God who is unsearchable, his paths beyond tracing out, his ideas too lofty for us to attain. In Competing Spectacles Tony Reinke adds to that insatiability the desire to see glory. He says, ‘‘We’re human – hard-wired with an unquenchable appetite to see glory. . . . We cannot help it. . . . Unfortunately, we are all very easily conned into wasting our time on what adds no value to our lives."

The book of Ecclesiastes was written at a time when there were no screens in sight and yet it speaks to this very issue. The author is wealthy beyond measure, and is using his wealth to pursue every form of entertainment his modern world can imagine – he has literally done it all. He doggedly pursues satisfaction, and as he sits down to write the summary of his endeavors he begins with, ‘‘The eye never has enough of seeing." (Eccl. 1:8) Why is this rich man so dissatisfied? Is it because he didn’t have a high speed internet connection?

Hannah Anderson says of him that the reason "[he] became dissatisfied with consumption, the reason we will also find it unsatisfying, is because it cannot offer the deeper, richer, sustainable goodness that our souls seek. When we invest our hearts in temporary things, things that John describes as 'passing away' we must replace them to maintain joy." And so this is the trap that we so often fall into. There is a high that comes from being entertained, cat videos can be really very cute, people can be delightfully witty, amazing things have been caught on camera. It is not that every idea that comes to us is bad, the problem is that more often than not, they aren’t worthy, and they take up a disproportionate amount of our time, distracting us from the good God from whom all cute, delightful, witty, amazing things come from in the first place.

And this leads me to my third and final point and caution about tech…

4.Distraction

And that is this problem of distraction from our good God and the type of lives he calls us to lead.  The sad reality is that even when we know better, we still find ourselves being drawn back to things of no value, getting so easily entangled in these worthless habits. One of the reasons we are so easily conned into coming back to these sawdust ideas is because life is hard! The things of the world require effort and strain, there are piles of tedious tasks to be done, and a lack of energy to get to all the things. I don’t need to make a list of hard things for you, you know them well! And no one likes to be faced with their shortcomings, from the very basic needs of living, like cooking and cleaning all the way up to our highest spiritual needs – the salvation of our souls. It is in this context of difficulty that social media and the like flash their bright lights and offer an escape from hardship.  Whether it’s looking at photos of friends (or more often than that, photos of not friends) or Pinterest like ideas about how something may look or be done, or videos of short and long lengths that may start out as a productive thing but soon develop into time spent on nothing in particular, our screens promise us effort free versions of the good life. They say, here is nourishment, here is refreshment. Our tech tells us we can escape from the burdensome task of living–it literally says to us . . . come to me, I will give you rest!

What I hate so much about this is (apart from the fact that it is a lie) is that it frames the effort required in life as a bad thing. It seems to mock perseverance and laboring for good. Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not become weary in doing good." It says that because we need to be reminded of that because doing good work is hard. But the instruction in Galatians does not end there, unlike the false offer of rest from our phones; it promises reward. Let me read it with the context before and the conclusion after, from verse 7: "Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever reaps to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." When tech calls us to rest, it says, stop trying, and put your feet up and then wastes our time and dulls our senses.

5.Tech free but worry full

So, we’re going to pause on the tech talk now and head back in time. We’re going back to digital tech-free, somewhat rural life, where ideas and information travelled as fast as they could be physically carried, and making your own bread was a given, possibly most people had chickens. . . . And yet here we find people are equally struggling with the burden of living, and spending their mental efforts on worthless things.

For this part we are going to turn to the Gospel of Luke. In the 10th chapter of Luke we are introduced to two sisters, Martha and Mary. I’m actually going to read it you in its entirety so that the details are fresh in your mind. . . .10:38ff

"Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, 'Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? (now notice how she doesn’t give him a chance to respond to her question before she tells him what to do, she said…) Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?  Tell her then to help me.' But the Lord answered her, 'Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.'" - ESV

Now as we have a look at this it is interesting to know what has come before in the gospel of Luke, namely that Jesus has revealed himself as a miracle worker, having authority over sickness, nature, and . . . large scale catering. To get a deeper glimpse into his response to her, and to understand the significance of his words to her, I’m going to imagine what else could have been said . . . so Jesus could have said:

“Martha, you know that a word from me would have completed the preparations,"

or

“Martha, stop complaining and get back to it, you invited us in the first place."

Or he could have taken her bait and said, “Mary she’s right, why are you sitting here lazily while you sister does all the work?”

But he doesn’t, he says none of these. Martha is working hard, no doubt feeling the weight of the preparations for her VIP guest and his entourage. I don’t want to only criticize her because I know that we have all been here, but we do have her actions recorded to learn from, so let’s look at them. The first things that she does (that we all do) is have a great idea! I’m going to host Jesus! And in executing it she realizes maybe she’s taken on too big a task – While we don’t actually know what her set up was and how capable she was of hosting all these people, we do know that she got really flustered and that she only comes to Jesus to complain when she realizes she’s reached her limit. She approaches Jesus exasperated, flustered, and with her mind full of how unfair it all was and tells him what to do. So how does Jesus respond to her? Well firstly, he says her name twice. I have thought long about what the significance of that is, could it be he is saying it twice firmly because she is easily distracted, or is he speaking gently and soothingly to her, I really feel it could be either, I don’t know, but what does seem clear is that whether rebuking or calming, he is not being dismissive, he has time for her. He doesn’t laugh at her, or diminish the difficulty she is facing, but he does correct her. And what is she doing that is wrong? His words are, "You are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, and it will not be taken away from her."

So what does this have to do with screentime? Martha’s head and heart were beholding all her troubles, from the practical details of what was needed, to the outrage at her sister, she found her anxieties about them to be counted worthy of her focused attention. She no doubt had a lot to do, but instead of going about her tasks with joy and clarity, the passage describes her as being distracted, and then Jesus rebukes her for being worried and anxious. Worry and anxiety are ideas - but they are even worse than the nothing of sawdust, they are more like actual carcinogenic toxins. Dwelling in distress about the particulars of something that is concerning us is a different thing to focusing on a problem with the intention of resolving it. Beholding anxieties as worthy of your attention is different from the devotion to prayer that we are called to in Colossians 4:2.  Philippians 4:6 specifically says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present you requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

You might find yourself in this season of your life needing to be more intentional about your screen time. But I think we are all always closer to Martha than we like to admit and need to think deeply about how we may go about the very flesh bound task of living without succumbing to stress and worry. How can we do that?

Well, imagine the scene written another way, a way in which Martha went about her preparations, but was not distracted by them . . . so the text could have read:

"Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching . . . And Martha, eager to hear his words, rejoiced in the opportunity afforded to her sister, and instructed her to listen carefully to the Lord’s teaching, and give her a full account when she was done with the preparations."

The difference is so clear.  How differently we could all be living if we woke up each morning and chose the good portion Jesus speaks of while going about our busy days. It is important to note that Jesus does not rebuke the work – nor remove it from her as we know he was capable of. His rebuke is to what her heart is consumed with, to what she is beholding, as her mental fixations are leading her to lose sight of what matters and in so doing, she behaves harshly towards her sister and finds herself telling God what to do. Jesus’s call to her to choose the good portion, is not the call to down tools, it is not a call to (as with the tech world) escape the realities of a world that requires much effort. It is so much better than that, it is a life-giving call, from the only one who can truly give us life – John 10:10 reads "The thief comes only to steal, and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

When we are burdened by the tasks of living, when we long for rest, refreshment, and satisfaction, it comes when we seek wisdom, and not escape. Back to our opening Psalm, 119:37 the Psalmist says, "keep my eyes from worthless things," but his prayer doesn’t end there; it concludes with, "preserve my life according to your word." From this we can see that seeking wisdom is not only a stepping away from one thing, but crucially also stepping towards another. It is not just a matter of putting our phones and worries aside, it is seeking first the kingdom of God.

You see, beholding isn’t just about what we choose as entertainment. It is all that we fill our minds with. So when we consider our to do lists, budgets, relationships, book lists, are they accompanied by worry and anxiety? Are we fixing our eyes on the troubles of the things in front of us, leading to impatience and unkindness and shaking our fists at God, or are we going about our many tasks while fixing our eyes on Jesus, rejoicing in the Lord, giving thanks, praying about everything, are we choosing the good portion and receiving the life that comes from it? 

Well, we have covered quite a few ideas today, and I hope it wasn’t too many all at once. In your packs we have printed out Philippians 4:8-9 which speaks to these very things; it is well worth your time and attention, and it will guide you in what else is truly worthy of your time and attention. It is interesting to note that in Philippians this passage comes directly after the instruction to not be anxious. God is giving us some very practical tools here to obey Him!

Let me read it now:

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you."

I love the phrase Worthy of Praise – think about that the next time something calls your attention and ask, is this worthy of praise? If the answer is no, stop quickly. And if the answer is yes, then be thankful, praise the people and praise the Lord, and let the peace of God mark your days.