Battery Low, Needs Charging

Battery Low, Needs Charging

Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This instalment of **Alive and Free** takes a spiritual and surprisingly relatable turn, using dead phone batteries and low‑power mode to talk about addiction, suffering, and what it really means to be cut off from the source of life. Host Bob Gardner reflects on a morning filled with low‑battery warnings from his phone, AirPods and computer, then links that everyday annoyance to the ancient idea of sin.

Drawing from Hebrew and Greek meanings like “missing the mark” and from Saint Paul’s line that “the wages of sin is death”, he frames sin as anything that “unplugs” a person from God, who he sees as the true source of life and love. This isn’t a checklist of bad behaviours or a lecture on rules.

Instead, Bob suggests that turning away from God starts long before any obvious mistake, and can show up as chasing life and comfort from created things — whether that’s substances, distractions, or even food — instead of going straight to the source. As he puts it, “If I just define sin as anything that unplugs me from the source of life… anything that unplugs me from him,” then the real question becomes: where are you plugged in?

He shares how prayer, for him, is less about saying the right words and more about living in a “plugged‑in” state of continual connection. He also talks briefly about his experience after baptism as an Orthodox Christian and the sense of never being fully alone again. If your inner battery feels like it’s down to 1%, this short, reflective episode might prompt you to ask a simple but powerful question: what are you actually charging from today?