Growing up I’m sure you had the same experience I had: I would get a new toy for Christmas, or my birthday, or Easter and proceed to get very excited. Then Sam came along and wanted a try, and because it was new I didn’t want to let him. But what did Mom say?
“You need to share with your brother!”
This pattern went on for the rest of my childhood and continues today. Except that now I genuinely enjoy sharing with people. When Janet broke up with me a couple years back I bought myself a Playstation 3. It just so happened that I got full time at Harvest Hands around that same time, which justified the $400 purchase (At least in my mind). I bought the PS3 for the sake of two games: God of War III and Final Fantasy XIII. But then I bought another controller and Army of Two, so Cory and I could play a game together. After that LittleBigPlanet was purchased for the same reason. Then two more controllers and ModNation Racers were “picked up.” As you can probably tell, I bought them because I wanted to play with other people. When I go home to KC I’ll bring the PS3 along so that I can play with Sam, or Blokus with Dad. Though if you’ve never played LittleBigPlanet with my Dad you should, because it’s a hoot.
Last week I was thinking about Facebook and why I facebook so much. The first thought was that I like knowing what other people are up to, partly because I want to see if my life is any better than theirs. I want to be in the know, I want to see what my “friends” have been up to. That way when we actually talk, face to face I mean, we have something to talk about. “I saw on facebook that you bought a new puppy!” “So tell me about this new job.” “You’ve been out of the country for six months, what’s the deal with that?”
But there’s another reason why, I think, we do it. Whenever you post something on facebook you have to click a button before it goes up. That button is blue with white letters and says “share.” Share a picture, a thought, a note, a website, a game, anything. We aren’t built to live these lives we live alone. We are designed to be together. There are very few solitary animals out there. Let me give you an example:
While walking through Bricktown in Oklahoma City with Cara we spotted some mallards at the riverwalk. We stopped to look at them (mostly because I think ducks are funny and they make me laugh) and something caught my eye. For each hen there was an accompanying drake. They were paddling along together in pairs. There was the odd duck out every now than then, but the majority of these mallards were paired off.
I don’t bring this up to propose that because ducks like to be together so should we. I just think that if God is who we say He is, than how could His character not shine through his creation. I don’t know if God specifically created mallards. I don’t even know how He created us. But I do know that in any act of creation the spirit of the creator shines through. For good or bad. We are, I believe, created in the image of God. God is a spirit, we have spirits. We are not created to be alone. We were made to be in community with God, and with each other. So this sharing that we do on facebook is born from a desire we have within us to be connected to each other. We write our thoughts, post funny pictures, and show who we are because we want to be united with a fellow man. I probably check facebook too often and call you not nearly often enough. In the future I hope to change that. But who knows, perhaps the person that I present on facebook and in this blog will be the person that you have a conversation with one day.
Luke
luketlancaster@gmail.com
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