Saturday evening, even on the bus stop bench I kept looking at my phone until a child's voice made me look up

On Saturday evening I was walking to the bus stop after grocery shopping. I had a shopping bag in one hand and my phone in the other, and as I walked I kept checking, back and forth, the rent I still had to transfer and a group chat I hadn't answered. I never took my eyes off the screen and only saw the seams between the paving stones. For days my head had been full of nothing but small numbers and small things I had been putting off here and there.

Even sitting on the bench at the bus stop, I was still looking down at my phone when a child beside me said loudly, "Mom, look at the sky! The sky is orange!" My head came up before I knew it. The sun had almost finished going down between the buildings, and the undersides of the clouds were spreading from orange into pink. The hand holding the phone dropped awkwardly to my side. For a while I had forgotten that the sky was this big.

A place to rest my eyes

I set the bag down at my feet and opened still().

My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:2 (WEB)

When I read the words "heaven and earth," the sky I had just looked up at lay right over them. The screen I had been staring into was the size of a palm, yet the place help comes from was written there as the One who made even that sky. The rent transfer and the group chat had felt huge to me, but under that sky they looked like small things. The rent was still something to do today, but the height I looked at it from had risen one notch, from the screen to the sky.

I missed one bus. Twelve minutes remained until the next, so I put my phone in my pocket. In the meantime the sky slowly cooled from orange to violet. I counted the streetlights as they came on, one by one, and lost count at the fourth. I decided to transfer the rent once I got home. The leaves of a green onion poked up out of the shopping bag and swayed in the wind.

Today's breath — Lift your eyes from the phone, look at the sky once, and breathe out slowly.