On this eve of the Feast of the Holy Family, I am reminded that God is Love and that we are called to be His love to those in our family and beyond. How and where do we do that?While a Facebook page might be a good place to encourage people to converse about faith and God's love, I think that it is just a starting point for the conversation.
Is God’s love transmitted through a Facebook page? In my experience, not in the way we desire. Can this medium be useful in informing, entertaining, and connecting people who will perhaps talk by phone or meet in person to truly learn about each other and share God’s love? Absolutely. But that human follow up is the essential element.
Conversing with someone on a Facebook page is like leaving a business card with someone. The act of leaving the card only becomes meaningful when it leads to a human interaction to see what we have in common and how we can help each other.
Jesus didn’t speak impersonally, ‘Fishermen, please come over here and help me out!’ He called the disciples BY NAME and we are challenged to do the same.
I don't believe that an e-mail message, Web site, Twitter post, or Facebook posting can change someone's life the way human interaction can. Even those couples who meet online through a matchmaker Web site eventually have to meet in person and date before anything truly fruitful comes from it.
So what is needed to send God’s love through a Facebook page is that human connection. It means keeping the usefulness of that medium in perspective. It calls for authentic and direct communication between people — and eventually, it becomes necessary to move out of that easy and convenient Facebook medium and onto the hard road of being there with God’s love for that person, in person ... In fact, a personal follow-up recently yielded some interesting results for me.
I called to encourage someone based on a Facebook posting. There was joy and a renewed friendship. We made plans to get together and I can’t wait until we meet in person.
While the posting could have just floated over the impersonal Facebook Wall, for some reason I felt compelled to grab the opportunity to reach out to this person and I am glad that I did.
God’s love was so apparent in our brief phone conversation as we made plans to meet and share our thoughts and the activities in our lives. I was reminded once more to keep the human element first and foremost in my life--no matter how much the digital world and its proponents aim to take over.
I hope that God will keep me centered on the essential human element because intentional caring and charity is truly God's love in action -- and this is the call and the need in each one of us.
