To God, Via Facebook

I don't know if you're on Facebook.  Half a billion people are, but of course that means that 5.5 billion are still making up their minds. It's certainly much more in vogue to slam the site.

But if you do have Facebook, I have an exercise for you.  Put yourself in the presence of God -- that is, open yourself to prayer, however you do that -- and then, in that space, wander through the status updates and Facebook pages of your friends.  Do it aimlessly -- that is, not with any particular goal or to catch up with person X or Y.  Don't use this time as an opportunity to leave a note, to "like" or to "poke".  Be a lurker -- or better put, be a witness.  Consider yourself as having the opportunity to stand in a place similar to God, with the privilege of getting a glimpse at the private lives of other people.

Do that for 10 or 15 minutes.  Then stop and sit with what you've seen.  Where was your attention drawn? Where were your emotions stirred up -- and in what ways?

After you've sat with that a few minutes, a follow up: Having seen what you've seen and felt what you felt, if you now actually were God, what (if anything) would you want to do?

It's worth sitting with those desires a while.  God chose to enter into the world as a man.  What did he see that made him do that? And what came with that -- that is, returning to the question of the last paragraph, what do you want to do?

An important proviso: Theologians have a hundred reasons for why God chose to walk among us as one of us, many of them very abstract.  But God's motivation for entering in was as specific and personal as his knowledge.  He didn't know "humanity"; he knew Frank and Edna and George.

The point being, don't feel the need to abstract from the specifics of your friends' pages that touch you. Trust that it really could be that God came down simply because he wanted to taste Marge's now fresh cookies, or because Amy's having a bad day, or because he wanted to see keyboard cat play Nickelback or this kid out.