"Give Your Facebook Page A New Facelift"

Featured in the song “Let’s Go” with fellow Christian group, Group 1 Crew, Toby Mac delivers this line. I’ve pondered this line off and on ever since I first heard it last year.  

I recently read an article in which people were asked to air their pet peeves about things their “friends” do on Facebook. Some of them made you shake your head, but some of them were so minor it made me wonder. How can people really be that critical of their so-called-Facebook-Friends?

The truth is- Humans need to share, to be acknowledged by fellow humans. That’s just how God designed us. And the sad truth of that is there are a lot of people out there who feel neglected and lonely, even if they do know God personally. 

Facebook was designed to be a social network, where people can easily come together and share their lives with each other. Then why is it that one person would show disdain if another shares mundane details in their lives, boring and seemingly pointless pictures, posts from a game they enjoy but the other did not? We cannot all be movie stars on a daily basis! Do people really believe it would be nothing but one Grand Adventure after another, and therefore that’s all that is appropriate for gracing your Timeline? Well, if so, then I guess I’ll have to delete my account. I’m just a plain old, BORING stay-at-home mom. No red carpet trips in the foreseeable future for this FB user…(although I can confess to having gone to high school with a TV star, and having sat next to her in band class!)

God gave us two commands that we sometimes find hard to carry out- "Love others as yourself" and to show His Love to others through our daily actions.

Guess how that ties in? That's right, tolerance towards the "pet peeves" of Facebook. Just because Facebook is a virtual reality doesn't mean it should be treated any differently than your daily "real life." I am certainly not going to "de-friend" my husband (who incidentally HATES everything about Facebook) because he goes on for 20 minutes at a time about little details of his day at work. But it only takes one click to toss a Facebook connection because you felt they had too much drama in their online life. I know of a friend who spends a great majority of her status updates complaining about how things are with her young children.  One shared friend confessed she had de-friended her because they couldn’t take the negativity. If I took all her statements at face value, I would probably feel the same. I struggle with similar feelings of frustration and lack of fulfillment, and it can drag me back down to have to share in that…until I see her private comments on a messaging board off Facebook that reveal she’s seeing her doctor for Post Partum Depression. 

I think of how many people, myself included, turn to social networking like Facebook, as a means to connect with others. And it squeezes my heart to think of all the people who would turn their backs on someone simply reaching out for a little love, oftentimes simply because it’s a little messy, inconvenient or boring to be involved in their lives. Why is it more difficult to simply ignore the annoying, and pray for them instead?

Today’s grace was simple- God has given us a greater ability to reach out and touch the lives of people who really need to see his love than ever before. We need to start by using it in simple ways- like giving our Facebook page a new facelift, and our usage of it a renewed application of love.

*I realize this may be a sore point for some, just realize this is meant in a generalized view. It certainly won't encompass all the problems I've seen which can include tough subjects like attacks from others because of your faith, or privacy concerns due to the nature of sharing guidelines within Facbook's framework.

*I should in all sense of fairness post that I 'stole' the "amazing" picture I used today from Facebook. I don't know the original source other than one of my friends posted it to her photos.*