Having once broken my glasses by walking into a pillar while reading a text, I was interested to read that a government transport advisor has suggested placing road signs at ground level to guide ‘zombie pedestrians’ who are glued to their phones. His suggestions include red lights on kerbs to warn people to stop at junctions, and ‘text walking lanes’ with arrows to guide them along pavements. He concludes that these changes are necessary because trying to change people’s behaviour is a lost cause. This may be so but surely it’s a sad reflection on society that rather than engaging with one another and enjoying the beauty of the created world around us our lives have become transfixed and diminished by our obsession with a tiny screen.
In the Bible the Psalmist writes ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.’ We were not designed to live life staring at the ground, but rather to look up to the heavens. As CS Lewis once wrote, ‘Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.’