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.
3 comments:
awesomely stated!
His app never needs a battery or a recharge ;)
take on all my s#!t?! all my s#!t? There is a lot of s#!t out there. Not only mine, but the stuff other people leave in my life like dog poo on the grass.
Then there's the s#!t I left on people's grass- He takes that too?
Christians say that they believe that- you say that you believe that- But do you really believe that?
Do I really believe that? If I did it would make loving neighbors and enemies a whole lot easier.
Dear Allen,
I noticed you are reading "Organic Church"; What do you think about it, especially since you are working for a very large church?
A church, I think, is like using a well to get water. The water is safely contained, and a person can use it to make the world a better place, or benefit himself, but the person has control over what grows.
It is much different to use a stream. For one, there is no usual procedure to get water from the stream, and the stream could flood- its is not as safe- and plants are growing naturally, but there is a lot less control over what grows.
The Organic Church is trying to grow by the stream of living water; it will be different, always changing and sometimes scary. Can we do it?
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