"Amazing"

"Amazing."

My daughter-in-law used the word to describe how she feels about the things you can now do on the Internet. No doubt you would agree, I know I do. There are truly amazing advancements being made in web-based applications, iPhone applications, hand-held computing, online backup and archiving, business tools, database storage and mining, marketing, blogging and tweeting and social networking and that would not even cover the first half of the first sentence if some real techie was writing this.

But she was sensitive to the fact that she uses the word 'amazing' to describe God, and she uses it in worship of God. So she was concerned that maybe she shouldn't use the same term to describe God and the Internet. I'm not going to make that call - I think it is a personal choice although I applaud her totally for being concerned about such things at all. It is good to want to set aside or 'consecrate' certain parts of your vocab to honor God.

But I was still sitting there in total agreement that the advance in the Internet of late are, in my opinion, amazing. Look at the picture I posted above, from Wikipedia - here is a larger copy. Her concern over the use of the same descriptor for these two very disparate things (one of whom is truly not a 'thing' so please pardon the clumsiness of the language) caused me to think. Most anything causes me to think. So very few things can cause me to act... That aside, I began to think.

Here is a simple example of the power of the Internet these days - I like to use it for Bible study. And I like "Bible Gateway.com." Notice that you can simply click on those words and you will be whisked to that site. Further notice that if I want to quote a single scripture out of the whole Bible, I only have to use the "embed" feature which BibleGateway.com provides. Like this:


²³ Congenial conversation—what a pleasure!
The right word at the right time—beautiful! (Proverbs 15:23, The Message)

And if I wanted to use a different translation, or add the context, or simply show the entire chapter, I could make a few more clicks and it would be done. Here is a link to an info page about this cool feature -
Info box

OK - so what am I saying? That one of the most beloved books in all of literature is totally available to search, word by word, verse by verse, and chapter by chapter at the touch of a button. And you can type in huge long URL (or have the web site create and enter those long addresses for you) and go to any part of the Word of God in a flash. And if there is no 'page' already to put this info together, one will be created in a nanosecond so you can have the info on your screen, send others to it, and go back to it in the future.

And this doesn't even begin to cover the many great software programs which you can buy or subscribe to online which will put all of that and study info on top of it onto your hard drive. Want a picture of modern-day Jerusalem and some historic site mentioned in a passage? Just do it. Want a map of Paul's missionary travels in chronological order? Snap. Each and every of the smallest details are available. Greek? Lexicon? Interlinear? Extra-Biblical History? All there.

Or want to break down Shakespeare? Almost as much detail is available for Bill's books and plays. And here is the point I would like to make about that -

Each one of these pages full of these amazing details, whether that page contains one word and it's definition or an entire anthology of Jesus' spoken sermons with locations and audience information, has an address. It has to - that's the way the Internet works. To go to that page, you have to simply type in the URL and you will go to it. Can you image how many pages there would have to be just to contain all the info in one book of the Bible, let alone the entire Bible in dozens of translations? And yet you or I can simply access that info one page at a time if we need to. And the Internet search engines give us access to millions (billions) more pages on every other subject that the mind of mad could ever consider.

I got a bunch of onions free yesterday, and I clicked "onion soup" into Google. Got back 6,070,000 results. I could go to any one of them.

So if the Internet - something created by the mind of man- 'knows' the address of each and every one of these pages/locations, and can navigate us to the exact one we are looking for in the blink of an eye, why is it that I can sit here and forget that God can know my every need, my every thought, and my every word of prayer to Him or the words of prayer I can't bring myself to utter? If the Internet can 'know' so much about me and about all the other info (good and not-so-good) on the WWW, how much more above-and-beyond comprehension is the ability of God to know? I'm getting a little excited here!

My Pastor once said, "God knows your zip code," and it was an 'aha' moment in my life. But that was over a decade ago. Today, I would say, "God knows your URL," and in light of what I just typed above, it simply blows my mind. The Internet is truly incredible.

God is truly amazing.