Monday, May 7, 2012

Is there an app for that?

Apple states on their iPhone web page that they have over 500,00 apps for "work, play, and everything in between."  Need to learn Cantonese - there's an app for that.  Need to monitor your investment portfolio - there's an app for that.  Need to find a friend from college, post a video of your 80 year old granny doing the "forbidden dance," or save the human race from a zombie Apocalypse - there's an app for that.

There seems to be an app for just about everything...everything except for despair, hopelessness, and emptiness.  The app industry that drives and defines our over-connected existence is merely a well-developed, adroitly marketed symptom of an insatiable craving deep with in each of us.  There is a craving within each of us that is beyond reason or rationality.  It is a visceral craving that we attempt to satisfy through sex, alcohol, drugs, relationships, entertainment, success, wealth, possessions, and religion. 

We are convinced that our craving's satisfaction is somehow tied to our own.  If only we meet our every need, want, or desire then surely the craving will vanish.  If I do whatever I want, whenever I want, with whomever I want surely the craving will subside?  But here our intuition fails us.  The more we cave into our every need, want, and desire the more insatiable our cravings become.

The cliched truth is that God is the only "app" than can satisfy our craving.  But this ain't no genie in a bottle, hocus pocus, god of my understanding app.  This is a God become flesh, take on all my s#!t, nailed to a cross, victory over death and darkness application. 

Is there an app for despair, hopelessness, emptiness, and insatiable craving?  There is.  His name is Jesus.