May 29, 2001
Internet use multiplies daily yet no one really knows how many people actually spend time in cyberspace. Adding together the total number of customers from each service provider turns out to be inaccurate. Apparently some providers include inactive accounts (to make themselves look better?) and government providers are no better with their numbers. Besides that, thousands go online for the first time each day. Any total is out of date as soon as it is compiled.
Regardless of inaccurate numbers, it seems safe to guess that millions of people use the Internet. That boggles my mind. How can anyone think in terms of ‘millions’?
This week I found an article that used ratios to put the world’s population into perspective. It suggested reducing the world to a village of one hundred people. By comparing the number of people who have computers to total population and applying that ratio to the village, they discovered only one person owned a computer. Explained in those terms it seems are globe is not as saturated with technology as we might think.
That same article went on to say that thirty people in the village would be Christians. How amazing that there are more Christians than computer owners (and that one person with the computer could be a Christian too).
As I thought about those numbers, I recalled that the Bible says God put the stars in place and calls them by name. He even knows how many hairs we have on our heads. Obviously, He is far better with big numbers than I am, and even though that kind of detailed knowledge may seem useless, this is not the issue. The point is, God knows and cares about details. As Scripture points out, He feeds each sparrow and notices if one falls to the ground.
The psalmist says, “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely . . . such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”
While that all-knowing quality of God could make us feel like shrinking back in fear under His scrutiny, it should motivate us to trust Him instead. He cares about sparrows — He cares about us.
Sometimes I try to imagine what it would be like to listen to the prayers of a million people all at the same time. How can God sort them out, then send appropriate answers, at the right time, to each person? For Him, this is easy. Remember, He knows how many hairs are on our heads. Yet this vast knowledge also includes compassion and understanding. He knows and cares about the things that bother or upset us and understands our needs.
Lord, should I stop trusting You, I would be a fool. Your knowledge far surpasses mine or anyone else I might trust. You know every detail of my life. Even more important, You care about those details. Guide each thought, each word, and each step I take, today and always. Amen.
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Understanding God .......... Parables 670
May 18, 2000
Millions of businesses use the Internet to advertise and sell products. Millions of ordinary folks use it to find information and to communicate with friends all over the world.
The Internet started as a convenience for government agencies. Soon other organizations saw its potential. Since the 1994 advent of Internet browsers, the number of web servers who feed information into cyberspace has exploded from a few thousand to over several million. They host uncountable personal and corporate web sites. With such rapid growth, no one has a handle on the actual size of the worldwide web. While most of us don’t care, some ambitious people are trying to draw a map of the Internet. They want to define and catalog it, somehow wrapping their minds around its size and content.
Imagine an even greater challenge: try to figure out God. The study is called “theology” and theology books are filled with finite human attempts to understand Someone infinite, Someone greater than the Internet or even the entire universe.
Theology tries to list God’s attributes and actions, dividing characteristics into those we can share — like mercy, and those that belong to God alone — such as the ability to know all things.
Theologians devote pages describing how God reveals Himself and how we can know Him. They describe and define His names and His triune nature. Some have perplexing titles such as “Essence and Attributes” and “Defenseless Superior Power.”
Besides chapters on His character, theologians describe the way God behaves. They talk of His mercy in sparing those who deserved judgment. They describe how He takes care of His people, sometimes in miraculous ways.
However, the best way to define God is the way He defines Himself. That is, what God is like is most clearly seen in His Son, Jesus Christ. Yes, Jesus was a human being. He was born just as we were, grew up, learned, and was subject to His parents and civil law. He got hungry, thirsty and tired. He was just like us in that He had feelings, thoughts, and choices to make.
However, if we study His life, it is not long before we realize He is not exactly like us, or rather, we are not exactly like Him. We make mistakes, talk out of turn, lose our temper, and get annoyed with people. We lose patience with our own sin and the sins of others. But Jesus said and did the right things — always. He reflects qualities that belong to God and God alone. If descriptions do not convince us that He is divine, Jesus also walked on water, healed the sick, turned water into wine, fed thousands with less than what is in my pantry, and raised the dead. He read minds and forgave sins. Only God can do that.
We may not understand words like immanent and eternal, but in Christ we can clearly see that God is loving and merciful. We can also see how He hates sin but cares deeply about sinners. That is, God pulled on humanity like a pair of pants and walked among us. He knew we could not grasp His nature by mere descriptions. He knew we would stumble if all we had were stories of His interaction with Old Testament Jews. Skeptics even discredit God and those miracles by saying they were superstition, coincidences or freaks of nature.
But no one can explain away Jesus. Real people saw, touched, and heard Him. They interacted with a living person who loved them and did miracles. They watched Him give Himself up to death on a cross for human sin. Over 500 of them rejoiced to see Him alive again when God raised Him from the dead. They knew He was God in the flesh.
By studying Jesus, we can begin to understand God as described in Scripture. By putting our faith in Him, we can experience God too. He will live within us and walk beside us. We never again have to struggle with long words and vague descriptions that always fall short because, in Christ, we can not only know who He is but we can know Him as our Savior and personal friend.
Millions of businesses use the Internet to advertise and sell products. Millions of ordinary folks use it to find information and to communicate with friends all over the world.
The Internet started as a convenience for government agencies. Soon other organizations saw its potential. Since the 1994 advent of Internet browsers, the number of web servers who feed information into cyberspace has exploded from a few thousand to over several million. They host uncountable personal and corporate web sites. With such rapid growth, no one has a handle on the actual size of the worldwide web. While most of us don’t care, some ambitious people are trying to draw a map of the Internet. They want to define and catalog it, somehow wrapping their minds around its size and content.
Imagine an even greater challenge: try to figure out God. The study is called “theology” and theology books are filled with finite human attempts to understand Someone infinite, Someone greater than the Internet or even the entire universe.
Theology tries to list God’s attributes and actions, dividing characteristics into those we can share — like mercy, and those that belong to God alone — such as the ability to know all things.
Theologians devote pages describing how God reveals Himself and how we can know Him. They describe and define His names and His triune nature. Some have perplexing titles such as “Essence and Attributes” and “Defenseless Superior Power.”
Besides chapters on His character, theologians describe the way God behaves. They talk of His mercy in sparing those who deserved judgment. They describe how He takes care of His people, sometimes in miraculous ways.
However, the best way to define God is the way He defines Himself. That is, what God is like is most clearly seen in His Son, Jesus Christ. Yes, Jesus was a human being. He was born just as we were, grew up, learned, and was subject to His parents and civil law. He got hungry, thirsty and tired. He was just like us in that He had feelings, thoughts, and choices to make.
However, if we study His life, it is not long before we realize He is not exactly like us, or rather, we are not exactly like Him. We make mistakes, talk out of turn, lose our temper, and get annoyed with people. We lose patience with our own sin and the sins of others. But Jesus said and did the right things — always. He reflects qualities that belong to God and God alone. If descriptions do not convince us that He is divine, Jesus also walked on water, healed the sick, turned water into wine, fed thousands with less than what is in my pantry, and raised the dead. He read minds and forgave sins. Only God can do that.
We may not understand words like immanent and eternal, but in Christ we can clearly see that God is loving and merciful. We can also see how He hates sin but cares deeply about sinners. That is, God pulled on humanity like a pair of pants and walked among us. He knew we could not grasp His nature by mere descriptions. He knew we would stumble if all we had were stories of His interaction with Old Testament Jews. Skeptics even discredit God and those miracles by saying they were superstition, coincidences or freaks of nature.
But no one can explain away Jesus. Real people saw, touched, and heard Him. They interacted with a living person who loved them and did miracles. They watched Him give Himself up to death on a cross for human sin. Over 500 of them rejoiced to see Him alive again when God raised Him from the dead. They knew He was God in the flesh.
By studying Jesus, we can begin to understand God as described in Scripture. By putting our faith in Him, we can experience God too. He will live within us and walk beside us. We never again have to struggle with long words and vague descriptions that always fall short because, in Christ, we can not only know who He is but we can know Him as our Savior and personal friend.
Monday, October 31, 2016
Technology: Pros and Cons .......... Parables 504
(date unsure) 1996
Because I have a computer with a modem, people ask, “Are you on the Internet?” I used to say, “No. I am afraid I’ll never come home — and someone has to make supper!”
In January, I gave in. After a few weeks of trying it out, “coming home” is not as difficult as I feared. My deep practical streak (Scottish ancestry?) and full schedule will not permit aimless wandering. However, I am delighted with this massive, easily accessible resource.
For example, someone asked me for an article on vacation planning. In less than five minutes, I loaded my “net browser,” connected to a local “server,” found a good “search engine,” did a word search that yielded dozens of article titles, and downloaded the research information I needed. Now I understand the excitement over this fascinating technology.
Although a relative thinks the Internet is part of a big conspiracy, other friends, students and writers find it saves multiple trips to the library and the expense of long distance phone calls to find information. Further, our grandchildren, with a little instruction and using the right software, have access to the same data as do doctors with a Ph.D.
Hasn’t communication evolved! It has progressed from pictures on cave walls to computer software that corrects our spelling as we type. Now words fly to the other side of the world in moments. One cannot but wonder will it last and what is next. Remember gramophones with the RCA logo dog who sat listening in wonder? Now most of those machines are in museums. A few years ago, folks said they could never manage without a telephone but now many are using another recent marvel of technology to answer it for them.
Our amazement is soon replaced by a yearning for more, perhaps because even this latest, easy-to-access network of information cannot solve all our communication problems. People still incorrectly hear or interpret each other. Prejudiced people still distort black and white facts with slanted journalism and statistics.
Communication is so easily garbled. Sometimes it is unspoken attitudes in the speaker. To that, listeners are justified when they respond with, “I cannot hear what you are saying because who you are speaks louder than your words.” Sometimes the garble is in the frame of mind of the listener or in assumptions made by both sides.
Technology gives us communication tools, but like any other tools, the quality of production is in proportion to the skill of those who use them. Word processors do not produce great novels and stories nor do telephones build bridges and relationships.
As for the Internet, it has its limitations. People put pages on the “World Wide Web” because they have an ax to grind. Some are strictly commercial. Some are so filthy that at least one “server” has added features to help parents protect their computer-literate children.
One other resource still impresses me far more: the Bible. The Author had no ax to grind, no selfish gain in mind. How could He when He is complete in Himself and needs nothing!
Besides, even though God used human instruments to write and produce them, His pages never need censorship. While they bluntly describe sinful humanity as it is, they also give hope. One passage says: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the people of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Jesus affirmed that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Web pages are helpful but no technology produces life or godliness, hence we are never satisfied with it. Instead, we need words of hope lifted from the pages of God’s book and downloaded into our hearts and lives.
Because I have a computer with a modem, people ask, “Are you on the Internet?” I used to say, “No. I am afraid I’ll never come home — and someone has to make supper!”
In January, I gave in. After a few weeks of trying it out, “coming home” is not as difficult as I feared. My deep practical streak (Scottish ancestry?) and full schedule will not permit aimless wandering. However, I am delighted with this massive, easily accessible resource.
For example, someone asked me for an article on vacation planning. In less than five minutes, I loaded my “net browser,” connected to a local “server,” found a good “search engine,” did a word search that yielded dozens of article titles, and downloaded the research information I needed. Now I understand the excitement over this fascinating technology.
Although a relative thinks the Internet is part of a big conspiracy, other friends, students and writers find it saves multiple trips to the library and the expense of long distance phone calls to find information. Further, our grandchildren, with a little instruction and using the right software, have access to the same data as do doctors with a Ph.D.
Hasn’t communication evolved! It has progressed from pictures on cave walls to computer software that corrects our spelling as we type. Now words fly to the other side of the world in moments. One cannot but wonder will it last and what is next. Remember gramophones with the RCA logo dog who sat listening in wonder? Now most of those machines are in museums. A few years ago, folks said they could never manage without a telephone but now many are using another recent marvel of technology to answer it for them.
Our amazement is soon replaced by a yearning for more, perhaps because even this latest, easy-to-access network of information cannot solve all our communication problems. People still incorrectly hear or interpret each other. Prejudiced people still distort black and white facts with slanted journalism and statistics.
Communication is so easily garbled. Sometimes it is unspoken attitudes in the speaker. To that, listeners are justified when they respond with, “I cannot hear what you are saying because who you are speaks louder than your words.” Sometimes the garble is in the frame of mind of the listener or in assumptions made by both sides.
Technology gives us communication tools, but like any other tools, the quality of production is in proportion to the skill of those who use them. Word processors do not produce great novels and stories nor do telephones build bridges and relationships.
As for the Internet, it has its limitations. People put pages on the “World Wide Web” because they have an ax to grind. Some are strictly commercial. Some are so filthy that at least one “server” has added features to help parents protect their computer-literate children.
One other resource still impresses me far more: the Bible. The Author had no ax to grind, no selfish gain in mind. How could He when He is complete in Himself and needs nothing!
Besides, even though God used human instruments to write and produce them, His pages never need censorship. While they bluntly describe sinful humanity as it is, they also give hope. One passage says: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the people of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Jesus affirmed that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Web pages are helpful but no technology produces life or godliness, hence we are never satisfied with it. Instead, we need words of hope lifted from the pages of God’s book and downloaded into our hearts and lives.
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