Stalking the Wild iPhone
When my dog Fred and I stepped into the park for an evening stroll last night, I noticed the pocket where I’d stuck my iPhone had gone empty. Don’t panic, I thought, you’ve only taken a few steps; certainly you’ll see it there on the ground. A traipse back and forth yielded nothing, nor did a dash back to the house, nor a dash back to the park as the night fell. Calling the phone repeatedly, I thought at least the darkness would reveal its incoming call-light, but . . . nothing. Then I remembered I had installed “Find my iPhone” at the advice of a young friend. Had I left it on? Would this really work?
What did I have to lose? My phone?
I dashed back to the house and found the Find My iPhone website, logging into the cloud and then hitting the “find my devices” link. To my shock and delight it brought up a map with a little green circle at my house (for my laptop) and another little green circle at the park. Mike drove me back to the park where I literally searched, computer and portable modem in hand, eyeing the little green circles as they changed positions, trying to approximate where in the grass the phone lay.
Silly me, I didn’t see the link for “play sound” until well into my search, but that link finally revealed lost lamb—I mean phone—face down behind a tuft of grass.
Okay, tech-savvy types, have a good laugh; but to me this was a paradigm-shifting experience.
Two revelations came:
One- Technology is more and more like God, putting God-powers in the hands of average, even stupid, people like you and me. I remember the days when a lost phone led to a “God knows where it is! Let’s pray!” moment. Now it will be, “Mac knows where it is! Let’s log in!”
Two: Privacy is a thing of the past. They know where we are. They know who we love.(Google calendar now has undeletable birthday notifications for your entire social media network!) They know what we eat, what we read, what we watch, what we write, what we speak, even what we think. Our only redemption is in living transparently, unashamed of our choices, even those made in the dark.
So let’s live lives clear as sunlight, right up until the moment they come for us and our children. “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me,” Matthew 24:9. Sure, the stakes of following Jesus are high. If you value physical safety and social acceptance above all, you’ll recoil from the risk. But if you cherish love, goodness, grace, and virtue, you’ll walk right into the fire.
Thousands of martyrs echo down the corridor of time that earth is not our home, and that heaven is cheap enough. I join them as I see a great war boiling on the horizon. The world will demarcate into but two classes. The hated class will run for the hills, and while technology may succeed in hunting them down, One greater than technology will make them willing to be hunted.
(28)
Jennifer I agree we ought to live transparent lives. Daniel prayed in his window while the NSA of his day were spying and monitoring all of his moves. Still he did everything in the open.
As far as they all know where we are. True again, but I remember watching a documentary a while back on Malaysia flight 370 that disappeared. An aviation expert was quoted as saying, "here we have all this modern technology of GPS and radars and tracking equipment, and yet a huge jet just disappears and we can't find it." When she said that, I thought to myself, if a jet can disappear off the radar, then in the time of trouble God can hide us, and keep us from showing up on GPS or radar.
That's great William. So true.
I've often thought that if God sees it fit for me to be alive during a time when it is no longer safe for me to openly praise Him, then I would not want to hide really (unless it's His will). I would love to, with my last breath, let my executioners know that "God is worth every drop of my blood", I would love to sing, having that assurance like the apostle Paul: Indeed I have done all I could, and henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness. So then the issue with persecution and martyrdom for us Christians is not so much the fear of death, but fear of the afterlife. Where am I going? Does God know me?
Beautiful!
Jennifer, you said "Cherish, love". Lol isn't that almost like saying the same thing twice? I do however see a slight difference and got your meaning
I noticed it because just recently I have noticed the word cherish and it has become one of my favorite words. Thank you for the message. If we are living as earnestly and sincerely for Jesus as we know how, then we have nothing to fear even persecution. Eternity with Jesus will be worth it!! Voni Radlinger
Yvonne thanks! BTW, cherish is the verb, love the noun in that sentence.
It is a sobering fact that technology multiplies faster than we can keep up with. If you want to be on cutting edge and completely involved you will sacrifice privacy. However possible the applications indicated may be, a guard against paranoia is probably prudent. I do not know how much time I have left on this earth nor do I know what God\'s time table is. How ever impressive and awesome the latest technological innovation may be,I have a God that is much more awesome.
The thought of me and/or my children enduring persecution is unsettling to me; but so is a life without Jesus. I take comfort in the fact that He knows the burden that we can bear. He wants us to have a future and a hope, and nothing outside of His will is going to happen to us. Lord help us to be courageous!
First, relevant and timely this post.
Second, while many wish to remain "private" and hidden, isn't God wanting His servants to be as a city on a hill or a lamp in full view of everyone?
Look at Daniel 3 and see how everyone's focus was shifted from the golden "god" to the 3 humble servants and their Living God. Who was everyone "tweeting" about that evening?...The God Nebuchadnezzar had inquired about ("what god" would be able save the insubordinate Hebrews from his furnace!) and His faithful servants who stood with Him in the harmless flames that could only burn off ropes.
Third, if what we see on the horizon is what it seems to be, the sealing work must be taking place and nearing it's close. (Eze 9, Rev 7)
What a solemn hour!
Jennifer, to me the question has never been about whether persecutors will find us or not but rather about our faith in God to pull us out of the fiery furnace. It was always about whether I had faith under the circumstances to honesty believe that God would save me the horrible sinner.
The saying goes, "all good children go to Heaven" which is not even close to being true. The people that go to Heaven are those that humbly admit they are sinners and because of that they lean on the grace and the merits of Christ and in that only. With them self is not involved, it's all Christ "who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Cor 130) and is "the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb 12:2).
It will be like it was with Moses facing the sea and Pharaoh and his army right behind breathing smoke on them. And somehow God opened the way out and the enemy was taken care of in the process. Man didn't have anything to do with it; in fact, they were just a complaining bunch of faithless sissies scared of their own shadow (just like sheep). God did it all just because they were part of His creation and descendants of Abraham by faith (mixed multitude) to whom God gave the covenantal promises.
We can be recipients of the promise too but we need faith in the God of the impossible and sometimes that is the real impossibility.