We are having supper, but the boy is distracted. Every so often, he glances at his cell phone and his fingers become busy.

He is text-messaging his girlfriend back home.

The boy is our nephew, 13, and the texting is something unfamiliar to my husband and me, because we are Neanderthals in such matters. We do actually have cell phones, but only use them for emergencies. The rest of the time, we talk on a phone connected to the wall with a cord.

And instead of texting distant friends, we do something that is becoming increasingly outdated, it seems: We use e-mail.

Texting can be annoying when it is done at the supper table, but I suppose it is just another form of communication, and like any other, it has to be used judiciously. But it can be distracting for a child. He can be sitting at the table, apparently listening to the conversation, while in reality he is receiving a message from a friend hundreds of miles away.

There are good and bad distractions, I would say. Prayer also can distract us from the world around us, but in a good way.

I often pray silently, especially when we have a houseful of guests, as we recently did. In addition to our teen-age nephew, we also had two grown nieces, my sister, and the youngest nephew, who is five, crowded into our not very big house. During the week, there were tears, arguments, laughter, games, many meals, and numerous trips to the playground.

And I kept sending little text messages to God. Oh, I didn’t actually punch them out on a keyboard of any kind, but just said them in my mind. Often, it was simply: “Thank you, God, for these people who love me!”

There is an ancient petition called the Jesus Prayer, invented during a time when there were no phones, radios, televisions, and certainly no such thing as text messaging.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner” is a great prayer to repeat when you feel on edge.

There are times when someone you love is very ill, you are having troubles at your job, or you are faced with a growing pile of unpaid bills. This prayer chases away the worries and also the fears, at least for a little while.

The best thing is this: You don’t need a fancy computer, a cell phone, or any other device, just the voice in your heart. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

And when herds of ants invaded our home during our relatives’ recent visit, I made my text message to God even briefer: “Lord, have mercy!”