Seeing the Bible Through a Facebook Mindset

Scrolling through my Facebook feed is often discouraging, even depressing. You wouldn’t think that seeing all that people are accomplishing and enjoying would make me feel that way, or you’d think I was a pretty awful person if it did. The thief of comparison steals my joy for them though. I wish I could hike like that, travel like that, clean like that, paint like that, homeschool like that. I wish I had grandkids. I wish I had the energy to do those things. I wish I didn’t have pain so I could go to those places. I wish I could eat those things and not be ill. Jealousy. Envy. Ugliness. For a long time I couldn’t be on social media because of it. Slowly, over time, I was able to learn to celebrate and be glad for people, even though I couldn’t do the same things. I stopped comparing and I acknowledged that what I saw in their feeds were happy moments of their lives, not complete pictures. Funny thing, but I’ve had to learn to do the same with the Bible!

“O God of my fathers, I acknowledge and glorify you,”

“Commit your future to the LORD. Trust in him, and he will act on your behalf.”

“Trust in the LORD and do what is right.”

From Daniel 2:23 and Psalm 37:3a, 5 

When we read passages like this from Daniel or David, we are getting glimpses into moments in their lives. We see revelations they have from God. In these moments, their hearts are right and they are making good choices. This is not the sum total of their lives though! They do, in fact, make mistakes. They make their fair share of mess-ups, in David’s case maybe more so! The fact is they are humans and they are not perfect. They don’t have it all worked out. These verses are their memes. They are their Facebook posts of when they were getting it right. They are sharing with the world the word they’ve received from God that can inspire and empower others to hopefully have their own Facebook moments. They are pointing people to God and sharing their testimony of how God influenced and changed their lives for the better. And that’s really what we’re supposed to be on social media for in the first place, right?

Here's the Thing: It’s easy to get tripped up into thinking that the thing we’re looking at, whether a post or a verse, is all there is to know about a person. The reality is that we are all complex creatures full of ups and downs.

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