My family is from the beautiful, snowy northern woods of Wisconsin. This past winter my husband and I visited my brother, his wife, and their sweet little one. After a morning of tea and breakfast, we bundled up little Ella in her pink snowsuit, sat in her very own red baby sled, and set out for a snowshoeing adventure.

I remember looking back at Ella as I pulled her across the snow and seeing her small, chapped lips curve into a steady smile. Her big blue eyes would watch the flakes fall from the ridge of the snow-laden trail as she stuck out her small mittened hand. She was completely amused and delighted to be taken on such a grand adventure as she sat safely in her sled. What a lovely happening.

It's an odd analogy, but it kind of reminds me of why I like entertainment, maybe why anyone likes entertainment. Just like my niece on that winter day, I get to be led into a scene without any use of my own mind or body getting there. I sit on my couch and let the lives of Instagram provide pictures and thoughts for me. I let T.V. make me laugh, I let a movie give me the opportunity to feel something that I wouldn't otherwise. It's fantastic.

But there's also this layered down feeling that it's getting to be too much.

There is so much stimulation, such high input. So much screen time, so much time eaten, so much mindlessness, so much information, so much musing. And it feels like not enough of my own engagement or creativity is practiced to help create and contribute to making a change. I'm watching life happen before my eyes and allowing productivity and my own thought contribution to lay limp and flaccid.

Consider the up and downs of watching the news. We are shown a bombing, and then just thirty seconds later are expected to applaud at a charitable event taking place downtown. Our minds and emotions are unintentionally trained to desensitize ourselves to certain happenings. If we were to mourn every sorrowful event, our grieving would make up our life. And so, we've begun to disengage.

Unfortunately, it's one of those really annoying things because all of this is in the concrete of our culture. It would be hell-a difficult to create a reality that is set apart from the norm of news stations, Netflix binges, Facebook, Instagram, email, commercials, YouTube, etc. We have become a digital culture, and I'm starting to wonder what kind of implications this will have on our society, the future, our government, myself, and the people I love. We have entered into a new age and no longer have the luxury of backtracking out of the technology rampage we are on. Better, faster, more efficient.

I'm truly not a technology-hating-junkie that's out to get all of the world's advances. But I am one that is a bit skeptical of the human's capacity to manage all of it. As we become more isolated from one another, more disengaged, and potentially more anxious, will we recognize our need for independence from the vast of what we are fed every day?

I think about all of the minutes that I've wasted watching videos, following celebrities, scrolling, and I ache over the time that has been lost.

As the next generation, we have to be attentive, moving, and ready. Jesus is real and our minutes are adding up. What are all of them accumulating to?

"The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" 1 Thessalonians 5:2

Make each one of your minute's count, friends.