The iPad was connected to the big screen TV when YouTube started to roll. Two of my daughters were having fun dancing to the music with my one year old grandson raising and shaking his little arms. Watching the synchronized movements of the five men on the video brought back memories of another popular group,The Temptations. This video had an updated beat and look and I thought I had heard this music before. I uttered the words, “Now, what’s the name of this song?” My oldest, Laura said , “Uptown Funk. Oh Mom, don’t let anyone know that you don’t know the name of this song. This has been around awhile and it is played at all the weddings.” Oh well, my cover was blown again. I can sometimes recognize the beat, but I’m not very good at titles and words of songs. In other words, I am not very “with it”.

My first embarrassment in the the area of music came when I was 12 years. I wanted some record albums for Christmas. The Beatles had made their splash a couple years before. Motown had come on the scene. It was that awkward age and I was having a hard time expressing my true pre-teen desires. I was the oldest of four children and no one had gone before me. I wanted to say, “I want some cool music!” Instead I muttered, “Oh, I don’t know,” when my mom asked. The decision was made by my indecision. On Christmas morning I opened an album carrier with three albums inside. Te-Dum!! The albums were Perry Como, Liberace, and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir. This was not what I was going to take to the next sleepover. Let’s just say that I would not have been cool.

We can spend a lot of time in our life trying to be “with it.” What do these slang words even mean? The Free Dictionary gives a range of meaning from being mentally alert to be culturally hip. That desire is in all of us whether it is conscious or subconscious. People want to be with it. They may not focus on the latest fashions, but they’ll want to be with it intellectually or spiritually. One might be caught up decorating their home, obsessed with sports details or micromanaging their children’s lives. It could be politics, awareness of intellectual ideas around a peer group where someone has the need to demonstrate the fact that he or she is with it. We fall prey to the pressure of trying to fit in whether it is a hippie compound, in a inner city or a high end country club. Being “with it” is good, but it is not when we have blinders on to others.

Blinders come in all kind of packages. It is so easy to be preoccupied with being up to date in my own world that I neglect the widow across the street who just lost her husband, the mother with the handicapped child whose son will never go to college or the family with the 16 year old daughter who was just diagnosed with a terminal cancer? Sometimes it is hard to read or hear the news about Yemen, Syria, Somalia and other parts of the world with suffering people on both sides, including our dear soldiers and their families. It is good to be “with it” in these areas, because God is “with it” in every aspect of life.

The Lord is is omniscient which means, “He is all knowing”. He already knows everything and cannot learn anything new. He has no struggle to catch up or put the best foot forward. As I trust Him to guide me the pressure is off. I just need to be available to be open and look around. The blinders can be put down.

I might call the song, “Uptown Funk”, all the wrong names or not know that it is Taylor Swift who is singing, “Shake it Off”. If it means I can shake along with my grandson I will try to learn a thing or two. As a grandmother this will still make me far from being cool in his new world. In the same way I want to see into other people’s worlds a little more clearly. This means slowing down to look and listen and I want to be “with it” for the right reasons. When I see others through God’s eyes I can rest in the fact that He knows everything about their situation and mine. I can drop the word “cool” when I relate to others, but I do want to be “with it.”

“For God knows what is going on. He takes the measure of everything that happens.”
1 Samuel 2:3 (The Message)