140 characters

I try to fit God into a box.  I try to keep God contained to the Bible.  I choose not to listen fully or take time to understand.  I want drive thru faith.  Don't make me enter the door, open the bible, or even worse, STOP! to hear what God is saying.

We take snippets from the Bible and use them how we please.  We try to fit God into one passage, one verse, or one thought.  We use those verses as weapons to point out others wrong doing, to make our own wrong doings okay.  We take those verses and ride high on the love of God without actually hearing what it might be saying to us in this time and this moment.

Really, we want God to just tweet to us.  Right?  We live in a culture where all we've got is 20 seconds to read a tweet or a facebook status.  Why doesn't God just get to the point?  We don't have time to actually read the bible, think about it, pray about it, hear God's voice in it, realize that it's living and changing and not always black and white.

The deal in my eyes is that we serve a living God.  A God who sent Jesus to the cross even though I deserve none of it.  This probably isn't tweetable.  The grace of God can not be contained to 140 characters.

I used to watch Parenthood.  I still remember an episode where the stay at home mom (Kristina, I think) goes back to work on a friend's political campaign.  She's surrounded by young interns and is trying to find her place on the team.  In a meeting, they mention needing someone to write up something on the education platform the candidate supports.  Kristina gets excited and says "I've got that right here" and pulls out a piece of paper.  The interns look at her, roll their eyes, and says something like "It's for a tweet.  You've got a 140 character".  Kristina's face just drops.  A candidates whole belief on a topic needed to be shrunk down to only 140 characters.

Can you imagine how God feels when we do that?  We claim we don't have time to listen that much or even read something longer than that.  We want our problem, troubles, and issues boiled down and answered in 140 characters.  Quick, simple, and easy to fix.  We can't let that happen. We are worth more.  We should want more.

I'm not talking hours and hours a day.  I'm talking 60 seconds, 2 minutes, 5 minutes of uninterrupted time.  Time where we might get a little uncomfortable.  Time where God is not only going to speak, but to change us.   We are worth more to God than 140 characters or the 20 seconds it takes to read them.