In this day and age, we enter utter panic mode if our phones don’t ring every five minutes signaling that we’ve received a text, call, tweet, or some other notification, instantly feeling ignored, annoyed, and disconnected from everything. The world as we know it is rarely silent, with smartphones, television, and social media making it difficult to ever truly get a moment to ourselves to step away and just be. The stigma of the “awkward silence” creates a pressure between individuals to always keep conversation going even when there is nothing else to say, and as a result, people have forgotten what it means to simply listen to one another. It is rare that silence is ever recognized for its true power and beauty and the clarity it can give to those willing to embrace it.

During my service learning trip to Uruguay, it was the moments of silence that helped me to better understand the nature of Christ in the world, because I allowed myself to become disconnected from the social media realm. From the breathtaking views and landscapes, to the challenge of forming meaningful bonds with children who speak a different language, it was these moments of silence that showed me the hope that is Christ, and that He is present in all parts of the world -- and I didn’t even feel the need to make a Facebook post about it. There is comfort in silence for it is in silence that God speaks, we just have to close our apps, log out, and open our hearts to listen.

Going into this trip, I knew the point wasn't tourism, but I was still excited to share posts and photos with all of my friends and family back home about the happenings of each day. I started out my trip that way too, updating social media every night with new photos. However, I all too soon found myself refreshing my profiles over and over again checking for new notifications, wondering what people thought of what I shared. I resented when the wifi was gone, and the early days of the trip seemed to drag on without end. It wasn’t until I checked my DailyQuotes app that I finally understood that my phone and social media could wait to be updated until I got home. The quote by Paulo Coelho was this, “How much I missed, simply because I was afraid of missing it.” I realized that worrying about missing something back home was causing me to miss out on the experience of being in another country, and it wasn’t until I disconnected from the social media domain that I could sincerely see and appreciate the beauty of God’s creation in Uruguay.

As said in Ecclesiastes, “There is a time to be silent, and a time to speak.” I say, too, there is also a time to connect and a time to disconnect. Social media and technology are great resources, but they are not to be obsessed over. At what point in time do we look up and see that the world has so much more to offer than what is on a three-inch by four-inch screen? We are so worried about falling out of the loop, we make ourselves available to the world every hour of every day, and that is an exhausting way to live life. In a way, in this world of technology, we live with half of our person living in the realm of social media and the other half carrying on as an actual individual. I believe everyone should make the disconnect, it made me realize what I was missing. It just might take powering off the smartphone to truly see all that life has to offer.