When Screens Can’t Save you
''My help comes from the Lord'' - Psalm 121:2 (Christian Short Story)
The troubled girl got home from class and crept across the brown hardboard floors of her house. She said her hellos and dashed through the suburban-style home. Her feet smashed against the stairs, and she made her way to her room, where she could finally relax and lie on her bed. Around this time, she would usually read her Bible.
She craved fellowship and communion, but under the weight of sin and shame, she buried herself in her phone. She flicked through YouTube, then TikTok, then Instagram… but there wasn’t enough entertainment to fill the void. It was like the drug had stopped working.
She needed stronger doses, so she pulled out the big guns; Netflix had never failed her. Except this time, it did. The mind-numbing wouldn’t work. She couldn’t focus for long enough without her fingers trembling against her phone. She was looking for an opportunity to find peace within the screens, to escape her reality and feel something other. To feel something more than guilt, than shame, than pain, than heartache, than failure.
Screens. Everywhere—so many screens. With one touch, she could transport to whatever part of the earth she wanted to be. She just wanted to be elsewhere, far from her troubles. A quiet voice called her inward, but her flesh called her outward. Under the spell of the algorithm, she fell.
She found herself devouring videos in the sphere of TikTok. First, she felt disheartened when she came across a video of children huddled under a mountain of rubble in Palestine. Then she watched a funny video and laughed for three minutes. After that, a clip of her favourite influencer came up. It reminded her of how little she’d done in her life. She was consumed by the wave of changing emotions.
Eventually, she came across one of the cheesy ones. Except it wasn’t just any video, the man she watched spoke the name of Jesus, and the name pierced her heart again. It reminded her that her Bible was collecting dust. That under a sea of papers, there it was waiting for her to flip its pages.
Under the guise of conviction, she opened up the Word of God, and it spoke to her. The living, breathing, and active Word filled her mind with scripture once again. A fresh wind blew upon her shoulder, a wildfire lit in her heart, and rivers of living water began to flow from within. She always wondered how so much could happen in an instant, how God could fan something into flame so quickly.
Repentance encapsulated her heart, and the weight of her sins melted away. She had finally found the peace she’d been searching for. God reminded her to remain in His presence - that the string of sins she had left throughout the week were issues meant to be repented of and surrendered, not carried like a burden on her shoulders. They were not meant to form a gap between them that kept her searching for fulfillment elsewhere.
The words stood out in red ink: “Remain in me, as I also remain in you.” She paused for a second and let it sink in. “Remain in me, as I also remain in you.” “Remain in me, as I also remain in you.” Over and over, her lips released the life-giving words. But now she was chanting them, meditating on them, and God wrote the words on the tablet of her heart.
Remain in me. - John 15:4