Pay it forward is kind of a new pop expression. I don't know what Google would say it means but I think I know that it means doing the right and loving and relational thing in the now for the benefit of then. I'm thinking - How can I significantly pay forward in 2012?
2011? One thing about this year that stands out is how much I've learned - how to use Facebook marginally, how to be more proficient with a computer, how to understand Latin grammar concepts better than knowing them but well enough to teach them (still working on that one!), how to focus more on important things than just on the tyranny of urgent things, how to forgive even egregious sins and to walk away assimilating God's grace both for me and for the offender and many others.
A year ago I had a Facebook page my son set up but not a clue how to use it. The why use it is entirely because one daughter-in-law communicates almost exclusively thru Facebook. I haven't come to that easily. I JUST found out the difference between "home" and "news" yesterday. I have been asking and asking and no one seemed to know the difference. I'm much less frustrated since that small but significant discovery. I'm still working on Klout. I'm tweeting and making great friends and connections on Twitter. In short, I'm a pretty "with it" grandmother!
In the years of my lifetime our culture has changed in huge ways. We live much more insulated lives. We don't know our neighbors - due to many factors: business, the tyranny of the urgent and air conditioning. Air conditioning? You betcha - no one sits on their front porch or back porch fanning, chilling and talking like "back in the day" (as Pittsburgers say). We prefer our cool homes. There is little or no comraderie in that!
People who go to church don't feel long term commitments to that church so the first wind of change or unease that blows - off to try a greener pasture! Instead of looking in a book or asking a grandmother, we look for advice to blogs and Google. Instead of meals seated with the family at a table set with silverware and plates we drive thru and eat on the way!
Wait! Before you accuse my of cynicism, let me quickly affirm that I resemble all of the above! I don't know my neighbors. I too spend hours at my computer writing, reading and researching rather than turning outward with open hands and arms. I too have too often settled for "friending" online or email instead of knocking on a friend's door or sending a card or note.
At this time of year we reflect on how God chose to send His Son into the world and how God chose to announce that coming. If Jesus had come this year, surely God would have used the internet and television to get the word out. Perhaps God's choice of WHEN He sent His Son sends us a message. Jesus spent the last three years of His life involved with people in hands-on, intimate deep relationships! God still chooses to relate to us and have us relate to Him in deep relationship! In fact, God created us IN HIS OWN IMAGE so that we have an inescapable need for face-to-face, heart-to-heart relationships! It is that true belonging with God and others that satisfies the longings in our hearts and souls!
My prayer for 2012 is that I will take the risks and do the time and invest the energy to build deeper relationships with God and others! O, I won't desert Facebook or my computer. Those things are good and almost necessary in our culture BUT I also want to pursue the main and greater things of building and maintaining relationship with God and others! I can pay forward in 2012 only if and when God changes my heart to find more quiet space far from the rapid pace that life is! May God make it so in my heart in 2012!
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Friday, December 30, 2011
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Black Holes
My son pointed out an article related to black holes and the Internet. Scientists at the University of Washington's Hubble web site have charted a map of the Earth color-coded as to the intensity of duration of these black holes.
You know the drill - you are diligently typing some profound thoughts when all of a sudden either your screen freezes with that hourglass icon that just goes on and on OR a sudden power glitch blinks off power and you lose all your great thoughts OR you accidentally hit just the right wrong key to suddenly lose all the work you've done and not saved. It's one of the MOST frustrating things that can happen to any writer!
According to this news article in the science section on MSNBC.com, these black holes might be attributed to an Internet server momentarily going down or a wireless network cutting out. Another cause might be a "cyber black hole." Research by computer science graduate student Ethan Katz-Bassett at the University of Washington and his faculty advisor Arvind Krishnamurthy has resulted in a program designed to search for these "strange Internet gaps." The result is a graph of the entire Earth and where these glitches (black holes) occur. Their hope is that this data will help Internet service providers track specific network problems and learn better how to deal with them. These computer scientists also hope to improve Internet consistency. After all, we are all increasingly dependant on the Internet for processing and disseminating information. Fine-tuning the system will help us all be more efficient in using the Internet. An additional benefit is that perhaps someone will eventually discover the vast black hole where all this valuable and "brilliant" thinking has vanished and be able to retrieve it once again.
There is another black hole unrelated to the Internet. It's a black hole of the heart! It is where many, many people live (or at least exist)! It's a very scary place where days pass slowly and nights pass even more slowly. It's almost like continuing to live after "flat-lining" on an ekg. The colors of this black hole are mostly unrelieved black with perhaps a little gray or deep blue.
Many famous people have lived in this black hole. Pablo Picasso painted through his black hole experience and expressed his pain in his art works. Others who have struggled in the black hole of depression are: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Charles Spurgeon, William Cowper, missionary David Brainerd, the great preacher Jonathan Edwards and many others. William Cowper - who wrote some wonderful hymns in the midst of his pain - described his own black hole in terms that resonate in my own heart: "Behind a frowning providence, God hides a smiling face." (Hymn, "God Moves in A Mysterious Way") John Piper, the great Reformed Baptist preacher of our generation, wrote of some of these men in his book, The Swans Are Not Silent, Vol. 2.
Depression can get a choke-hold on its victim. The causes of depression may come from physical, mental, emotional or spiritual origins. The symptoms and results of living in depression are also all over the map of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual parts of life.
Depression is actually almost drowning in down feelings and focusing only on those feelings. Those feelings drive the depressed person to desperate desires to run away, to sit and cry, to commit suicide, to go back to bed and pull the covers up tightly, to avoid family and friends and to simply check out of life in any meaningful way. It is virtually impossible to set goals and accomplish motivational tasks when life seems to be only darkness.
A practical cure for depression is to learn another way to live - not in the pit of one's feelings but rather grounded in God's truth! Hebrews 1:1 describes faith as "being certain of what we do not feel." Only God can bring that kind of certain faith to a heart so desperately in need of God's restoring love! It's important to measure this new kind of living in baby steps and over days rather than hours.
In the games of "Red Light, Green Light" or "Mother, May I?" - two options for actions are taking baby steps or giant steps. There are no giant steps through depression, and it's unrealistic to even think so. There are, however, baby steps as God begins to work His restoring grace deeply into the black hole of a heart desperately in need of restoration! This is something only God can do!
Sometimes He uses someone who has "been there and done that" to come alongside and offer a helping hand and loving heart but, in the end, it is a work God does. His promise is "to comfort us in any trouble." He also promises to bring that comfort through others who have also found that same comfort. Read 2 Corinthians 1:4. It is God's faithful promise to anyone living in the black holes of life!
You know the drill - you are diligently typing some profound thoughts when all of a sudden either your screen freezes with that hourglass icon that just goes on and on OR a sudden power glitch blinks off power and you lose all your great thoughts OR you accidentally hit just the right wrong key to suddenly lose all the work you've done and not saved. It's one of the MOST frustrating things that can happen to any writer!
According to this news article in the science section on MSNBC.com, these black holes might be attributed to an Internet server momentarily going down or a wireless network cutting out. Another cause might be a "cyber black hole." Research by computer science graduate student Ethan Katz-Bassett at the University of Washington and his faculty advisor Arvind Krishnamurthy has resulted in a program designed to search for these "strange Internet gaps." The result is a graph of the entire Earth and where these glitches (black holes) occur. Their hope is that this data will help Internet service providers track specific network problems and learn better how to deal with them. These computer scientists also hope to improve Internet consistency. After all, we are all increasingly dependant on the Internet for processing and disseminating information. Fine-tuning the system will help us all be more efficient in using the Internet. An additional benefit is that perhaps someone will eventually discover the vast black hole where all this valuable and "brilliant" thinking has vanished and be able to retrieve it once again.
There is another black hole unrelated to the Internet. It's a black hole of the heart! It is where many, many people live (or at least exist)! It's a very scary place where days pass slowly and nights pass even more slowly. It's almost like continuing to live after "flat-lining" on an ekg. The colors of this black hole are mostly unrelieved black with perhaps a little gray or deep blue.
Many famous people have lived in this black hole. Pablo Picasso painted through his black hole experience and expressed his pain in his art works. Others who have struggled in the black hole of depression are: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Charles Spurgeon, William Cowper, missionary David Brainerd, the great preacher Jonathan Edwards and many others. William Cowper - who wrote some wonderful hymns in the midst of his pain - described his own black hole in terms that resonate in my own heart: "Behind a frowning providence, God hides a smiling face." (Hymn, "God Moves in A Mysterious Way") John Piper, the great Reformed Baptist preacher of our generation, wrote of some of these men in his book, The Swans Are Not Silent, Vol. 2.
Depression can get a choke-hold on its victim. The causes of depression may come from physical, mental, emotional or spiritual origins. The symptoms and results of living in depression are also all over the map of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual parts of life.
Depression is actually almost drowning in down feelings and focusing only on those feelings. Those feelings drive the depressed person to desperate desires to run away, to sit and cry, to commit suicide, to go back to bed and pull the covers up tightly, to avoid family and friends and to simply check out of life in any meaningful way. It is virtually impossible to set goals and accomplish motivational tasks when life seems to be only darkness.
A practical cure for depression is to learn another way to live - not in the pit of one's feelings but rather grounded in God's truth! Hebrews 1:1 describes faith as "being certain of what we do not feel." Only God can bring that kind of certain faith to a heart so desperately in need of God's restoring love! It's important to measure this new kind of living in baby steps and over days rather than hours.
In the games of "Red Light, Green Light" or "Mother, May I?" - two options for actions are taking baby steps or giant steps. There are no giant steps through depression, and it's unrealistic to even think so. There are, however, baby steps as God begins to work His restoring grace deeply into the black hole of a heart desperately in need of restoration! This is something only God can do!
Sometimes He uses someone who has "been there and done that" to come alongside and offer a helping hand and loving heart but, in the end, it is a work God does. His promise is "to comfort us in any trouble." He also promises to bring that comfort through others who have also found that same comfort. Read 2 Corinthians 1:4. It is God's faithful promise to anyone living in the black holes of life!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)