Monday afternoon at MLK I noticed more than the usual number
of folks with their faces buried in screens. I didn’t investigate, but I’m
assuming lots of them were searching for Pokemon critters. For all I know, the
memorial is a Pokemon gym.
I’ll confess that I don’t know what any of that means,
though my two young-adult sons could surely explain it. I do know that this is,
in the popular culture, “the summer of Pokemon Go.”
I could, at this point, shake my cane and say, “get off of
my lawn,” to those who are searching for these digital images, but it seems
mostly harmless good fun and I am a huge fan of good fun. I can't begin to count the hours I've spent playing disc golf over the past few years!
On the other hand, as I watched three young men standing at
the edge of the memorial focused on their screens I couldn’t help but thinking,
“glance up from your screen and take a look around. You’re standing next to a
wall into which are carved these words: ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he
stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of
challenge and controversy.’”
We stand, all of us, in a time of challenge and controversy. Taking Sabbath time for rest and recreation is fine. But, friends. stay woke. There's too much at stake to spend the entire summer with your nose buried in a screen searching for imaginary creatures.
