Social Media- good or bad?

Recently my extended family were all together, sadly for very tragic reasons but nevertheless generations - cousins, aunts, sisters grandparents were all there. I captured a moment when some of us sat on the sofa and called it Family Time!

I can't find words to do this snapshot justice however I believe it speaks adequately for itself.

The question it raises in my mind is one that is often hotly debated.  Is Social Media a good thing or a bad thing?

What pulls us together as a family when we are scattered thousands of miles apart across the globe is Social Media thus it is a good thing; we keep in touch and up to date with each others lives not feeling the miles of distance between us too much.

Yet it draws us apart when we are right next to each other on the sofa- not such a good thing then.

So is Social Media a good thing or a bad thing? Or perhaps it is both.

The world truthfully shrinks with Skype and Face-time, Instagram Twitter and the mighty Facebook. It's like we are to-gether  in the same room and yet we're not, for in the midst of tragedy no tweet or gram can hold a loved one tight with arms of love and comfort.

It seems as if people have certainly tried to send cyber hugs through Twitter and Facebook using them a means of publicly sympathizing with us in our grief in these difficult days. I suppose it has its place, the messages of support and love have not gone unnoticed and are a source of comfort in one sense and an outlet for emotions and grief in another.

But what happens when the tweets and posts stop? And they surely will in time. What then? How will the emptiness that this broken world gives be filled and the yearning of the deep be satisfied?

For we will find that the world cannot satisfy, we will always come up empty when we seek lasting comfort in the temporal things of and in the world. We will always be searching and not finding the answers either in the arms of one who loves and cares for us or in the messages of sympathy and support tweeted and snapshot memories instagramed or facebooked.

The source of all comfort can only be found in God. He alone can comfort the comfortless with hope that stirs satisfaction in us now and always. When the wells of the worlds comfort and wisdom run dry Jesus is the well that is still running with springs of living water and is eternal, spring of life that will never run dry, that will never disappoint, that will sustain us and satisfy our lives with good things, that will love us when we don't feel lovable, that will heal our brokeness when we can't pick up the pieces and put ourselves back together and when we can't fathom why and we yearn for something, anything that can makes us feel, make us alive again we will find in Him the living water, the spring of life, that satisfies now and always.

Revelation 21:6:

 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

Revelation 7:16-17

 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”