It's almost like the daisy game. You know, He loves me, loves me not .......... But, it's no longer a silly game.
It's Facebook and it's about step-away relationships where we feel safe hiding behind the internet to like this and not like that. And so we click merrily away day after day: like, like, like, like, like, like, do not like ........
We get request messages - "Like" my page. Businesses with FB presence thrive on how many "likes" they have. I have 23 requests today for me to like this or that.
I think we are becoming a cyber-culture with a Facebook face. We quickly click like to fit in or to trade likes but there's no real responsibility to stand behind our click. It's all about clicks and numbers!
Don't get me wrong! I love the connections we can make on the internet! I tweet and have a FB page, email and pin.
I also live in a more real world where I love and have relationships and care and cry. And, ultimately THAT's the world that matters!
Last Friday night Rick and Kay Warren lost their youngest child, their son Matthew. He killed himself because the pain of living became too overwhelming.
Just this morning I read a quote from Kay Warren when she spoke in Greensboro, NC at the Anglican Mission in the Americas Winter Conference February 15, 2011:
"In the last two and
a half years, our fourth grandchild nearly died at birth during an emergency C
section. Seven weeks later, our daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor and
had to undergo 26 hours of brain surgery with a long recovery. Our daughter had
severe auto immune disease, my mother slid mentally into dementia which made me
the primary caretaker. On top of all this, our youngest child struggles with
bipolar disease and has found it difficult to keep going. We have hung on by a
thread of a finger nail," she told a stunned audience. Warren said there
have been struggles in her marriage to Rick, and stress in her walk with God.
Through it all she says her walk with God has become stronger, deeper, richer
and more intimate. "I have great family and friends. I am embarrassed to
be in need. There is no big girl pill nor can I simply chill out." She
added, "When I realize because of God's extravagant lavish love for me,
and that I am his beloved, I can survive the painful circumstances that come
into our lives. "We need to tell people that they are the beloved of God.
In doing so we remove the shame, it removes the guilt over sins I can't
conquer. We are called to be messy with people and be with people in tremendous
need. When you know you are His beloved and not God's bother you risk it all
for Him. People may persecute you and hate you but you know also how much God
loves you."
--
By David W. Virtue www.virtueonline.org
Her words: We are called to be messy with people and be with people in tremendous need. When you know you are His beloved and not God's bother you risk it all for Him. challenge me!
The emergence of social media is an interesting dynamic where it is possible to see people sharing all kinds of things both trivial and personal. I wonder if these (for want of a better term, social media groupies - which, in some ways, includes me as I also enjoy Twitter, FB and Pinterest) realize their posts will forevermore be somewhere for all the world to see and know or be buried in some archive only to slither forth to bite them another day. Maybe my social media friends are just braver than I. I prefer to think that I am just more wisely cautious than they but who can say?
For some time now, I have been contemplating how to fit this observation (about social media) and my musings into a paradigm. I have to honestly admit that a major "hold-me-back" is having been there and done that when things come back to bite me. I seriously don't want to bring that kind of pain on myself! I have been and am a pastor's wife - more than 40 years. I have seen joking and innocent words and actions twisted in unbelievable ways. I have seen bold, risky messy ministry turned into attack opportunities.
It is impossible to catch feathers in the wind which is what spiteful, lying words become. I have lived that awful, ugly pain of being stabbed in the back when I was guilty of little more than being willing to participate in God's call to costly "messy ministry."
I have a friend who is also a pastor's wife. She has struggled with serious depression issues. She has two special needs daughters. I read her blogs and I marvel at her transparency. I benefit from her honesty and am blessed. She has been a major challenge to my heart in my contemplations!
Now I read Kay Warren's comments and I wonder if Kay hasn't cut to the heart of where I need to "camp out" and plant my feet asking God to embolden my fears -
We need to tell people that they are the beloved of God. In doing so we remove the shame, it removes the guilt over sins I can't conquer. We are called to be messy with people and be with people in tremendous need. When you know you are His beloved and not God's bother you risk it all for Him. People may persecute you and hate you but you know also how much God loves you."
Just sayin' ... and still thinkin'
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!
Remember the commercial: "Do you want to know ... ? Inquiring minds want to know ..." The ad was for the rag mag (magazine) The National Enquirer. I'm thinking of an "inquiring mind" with a little more substance than "National Enquirer" fare.When my 96-year-old grandmother died, she had an inquiring mind until just the very few last years of her life. I'm sure her "inquiring mind" kept her sharp. She inquired about all kind of things and wasn't shy about asking whatever her "inquiring mind" wanted to know! You better be ready, too, because only an intentional plan prepared you to draw boundaries in response to her inquiries!I was just musing about what "inquiring minds" want to know. What does my mind spent time wanting to know? I suppose this line of thought was prompted by a devotional I read yesterday about computer time: Facebook, Twitter and all the other ways the computer can eat up time in questionably productive ways.I see the magazines in the grocery store line that have covers and headlines with banners deliberately contrived to get an inquiring mind to open the cover and read the information inside. It is hardly substantive stuff!I hope my heart and my head inquire about things that feed my spirit. How much does my inquiring mind seek God? How much time do I spend reading the Bible and contemplating its application to my life?The path to a restored heart is an inquiring mind seeking God where He can be found: principally in the pages of His Word!
