Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately, here in Lethbridge, about the spiritual state of our hearts. Not just the big, obvious things, but the quiet, daily condition of our inner life. And I keep coming back to a image from a few years ago, one I’ve shared with our congregation at Miz City Church before. It’s the story of that little partridge, the one that lost its mother and spent its first days alone, under a lamp, being fed by hand. It survived, it grew, but it wasn’t until it found its place, nestled under the wing of a hen, that it truly found its home. It stopped its frantic pushing and nuzzling and was finally at rest.
I think that little bird is a picture of so many of us today. We are surviving. We are being fed—by notifications, by newsfeeds, by the endless stream of content. But we are not at rest. We are not home. We are searching for that warm, sheltering wing, and too often we try to find it in the glowing screen in our pocket.
We live in what I’ve come to call the Social Media Age. And it presents a unique challenge to our ancient faith. The Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, which I’m blessed to be a part of, holds fast to the Great Tradition—the faith handed down through the apostles, affirmed in the Nicene Creed, and shaped by the wisdom of saints who have gone before us. But how do we live out that faith, that “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” we cherish as evangelicals, in a world that is constantly shouting for our attention? A world designed to keep us scrolling, comparing, and wanting?
This is where I believe we need to recover an old, somewhat forgotten practice: asceticism. Now, before you click away, thinking I’m about to tell you all to go live in a cave in the Crowsnest Pass, hear me out. Asceticism isn’t about hating the world God made. It’s about training. It’s the spiritual discipline of saying “no” to some things so that we can say a louder, more joyful “yes” to the one thing that matters most: God himself.
Think of it like this. Our faith isn’t just a set of beliefs in our head. It’s shaped by our actions, especially our prayer. If our constant action is scrolling, our inner life will be shaped by anxiety, comparison, and a hunger for validation. We start to believe that our worth is measured in likes. We start to pray to the god of the algorithm, checking for its favour every few minutes. That’s a form of spiritual formation, just a very bad one.
Digital asceticism, then, is the intentional practice of creating space for God in the digital world and from the digital world. It’s applying that same “deep faith” we look for in a pastor to our own lives online. A faith that is “grown through the highs and lows,” not through perfection. A faith that can empathize with the struggles of others because we know our own struggle with distraction.
So what might this look like for us, practically, in our homes right here in Lethbridge?
First, it means embracing the discipline of the empty space. The Book of Common Prayer teaches us to structure our day around prayer—morning, noon, and evening. What if we protected those times with a fierceness? What if the first face we looked at in the morning wasn’t a screen, but the face of Christ in prayer? What if our phones slept in another room, so we could learn again what it feels like to wake up and simply be in God’s presence before we jump into the world’s chaos? The silence can feel uncomfortable at first, like a room without noise. But it’s in that quiet that we can finally hear the whisper of the One who is our true home.
Second, it means cultivating a posture of discernment, not just consumption. We are all being fed, just like that little partridge under the lamp. But is the food we’re consuming every day good for our souls? Does it lead to love, joy, peace, patience? Or does it lead to anger, envy, despair, and a gnawing sense of not being enough? We need to ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of discernment. To recognize when a conversation online is a trap. To know when to scroll past a post that will only spark resentment. To be a person who spreads the “warmth, friendliness, and sympathy” we value in a pastor, even in a 280-character reply.
And third, it means remembering that we are not just individuals, but a body. The evangelical emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus is a gift. But as the ancient motto reminds us, imagining the Christian life in purely individualistic terms is a “grave error.” We are saved into a community. My digital habits affect my brothers and sisters at Miz City Church. If I am anxious and angry from what I’ve consumed online, I bring that spirit into our fellowship. But if I am practicing digital asceticism, if I am finding my rest under His wing, I can be a source of peace.
This is the work of a lifetime. I don’t pretend to have it all figured out. There are days when my own phone feels like an appendage. But the call of Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Not the fleeting rest of a perfectly curated feed, but the deep, soul-satisfying rest of being nestled safely under His wing. May we have the courage to push past the noise and nuzzle in.
In Christ’s love and service,
Daniel Zopoula