My Social Media-less Life

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep… And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night…

Genesis 1:1-5, emphasis added

Zeke (the dog pictured above) and I have a system down when we go out in his apartment complex, and it goes something like this…

• Go out
• Try to do business
• Another dog comes out
• Lose our dang minds
• Go behind the buildings where others aren’t and hope business gets done
• Give up after about 5 minutes and head back in

None of us (Zeke’s mom, my bestest friend and I) are completely sure why Zeke loses his mind when he sees other dogs, and it’s only gotten worse as he’s gotten older.

Thursday night was my first night back with him in what feels like (and probably was) a month’s time. Naturally, the apartment complex has done their regular maintenance on the place and… although I wouldn’t live quite this far away from my suburb because of my job, it would be a high contender if I ever needed a place close to downtown. They keep up on the complex pretty well.

Thursday night, I preemptively took Zeke to the back of the buildings so we could go back inside faster because I was pretty tired and cold.

Except… it was really bright in the back of the buildings.

It took me longer than it should have to realize it was so bright because they had replaced one of the lamps that shines on the back yard.

This is only relevant to the post in that it’s how I began thinking about this weird thing that has seemed to happen to society as we’ve become more technology-dependent: we’re afraid of the dark.

Obviously, I see the reason to have bright lights, and it’s what I call “bad guy deterrent.” Or even, critter deterrent, depending on the type of critter we’re talking about… but it’s definitely bad guy deterrent, for sure.

But then there are other reasons I think people have become afraid of the dark:

• They got used to the constant light
• They were never taught that the dark isn’t to be feared
• One too many horror movies or TV shows about the dark

There have been a lot of studies coming out in recent years about how depressed and anxious people are in this day and age, and I am 100% behind the idea that a lot of that comes from social media… but I also wonder how much of that comes from not being able to sleep in the dark. Or not getting good sleep because they have so many lights on while they sleep.

Even though I’m writing this while I should be sleeping, I am very passionate about sleeping and sleeping well. Nearly everything I’ve read about getting good sleep says you should do what you can to cut out as much light as possible. And if there’s at least one thing I do, it’s that.

Growing up, I remember going back and forth between having a lot of light or as little light as possible in my room depending on different factors, like my age, the time of year, my physical location and my geographical location. More often than not, I slept better during the times I had less light in my room.

Is this all anecdotal so far? Probably, but it is my blog after all, and life is just one big anecdote. 😉

And then the Lord reminded me about the beginning of Genesis.

There’s a lot that has been studied in those first five verses in the first book of the Bible, but the thing we’re going to focus on is the fact that God did not eliminate the darkness, He simply gave it a purpose.

And then in verse 31, it says:

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

Genesis 1:31, emphasis added

With the way Genesis was written, God didn’t technically create the darkness as we know it… but He did name the night.

And I don’t think He would have made the night dark if He didn’t plan the very best for us.

We can’t change whatever society does for themselves, but we can make the change in our own lives.

So, I’m going to end this post with a challenge: let yourself be in the physical darkness of night for a little while. Open yourself up to the idea of resting in the night and letting the peace of God wash over you. He gave the Night its name, therefore He is still there to watch over you, even in those dark nights.