Encouragement

Love Trending

by Maria Franco
06/30/24
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In this modern age of reels and rolls, posts and stories, uploading and downloading, society seems to be obsessed with the power of the media.
Today the amount of likes that you receive for your online posts or pictures matters more than academic achievements. Marks and scores have been overpowered by likes, hearts and a hundred other emoticons even at times threatening to make languages extinct.

As the years are going to progress one wonders what the remaining pages to be turned will bring in? More new inventions, gadgets, online apps, lucrative offers that more deceive than offer, alarming sites which can wreck a person's privacy and even lure youngsters into dangerous situations.

How can we protect and safeguard ourselves when the people today want to be on par with their peers, competing, exceeding and even down grading others, all to make an impression and to make sure that they are very much a part and in line of this fast race?

While video calls, zoom meetings and many other connecting apps are a great boon to communicate with our loved ones who are far away globally and even a high requirement in the corporate world for business dealings, it can also be misused and this is where we need to educate the youth with a high insistence to downplay their resistance in setting boundaries.

With every event being captured today to the finest detail, angle and pose be it festivities or felicitations one wonders if the same technology was in place more than two thousand years ago, how would the people of that time reacted?If they had their mobile phones in hand, would they have been busy filming the tortuous passion of Christ and his extreme, beyond imagination suffering and crucifixion? For some it would have been a dramatic recording but for others whose hearts were with Jesus, it would have been a memory of his unconditional love that streaked the roads of Calvary.
Would they have recorded the voice of the Lord as he preached on the mountains, hills and seas?
Would they have captured all the miracles that he performed with its special effects?

Perhaps if all this would have been done, maybe today we  would have been able to view this live as it happened when the Lord lived on this earth.
Though we have watched movies like, 'Jesus of Nazareth' and The Passion of Christ' it would be something else to see the real presence of God, his earthly image then in person, would have been an enriching testament.
To see him walk, talk, smile and his anguish on the Cross. Would this have broken our hearts of stone and brought us to our knees in tears at the greatest sacrifice that God underwent in his love for us?
A love that no one can surpass but a love that is still trending to this day.

Jesus told Thomas, his apostle (John 20:29), "Thomas you have believed because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen but yet believed."
We have not seen the Risen Lord as Thomas did. We also do not have any pictures, posts or reels to view what happened during the life of Jesus, after his resurrection and how he ascended into heaven.
But we believe without seeing and this is the beauty and highest point of Christianity.

Our belief that Jesus came to this earth for our sake, leaving the heavens to live with us, to show us the way to the Father, to save us, to pour his love over us to the point of death. We believe that he rose from the dead on the third day, ascended to the Father, is seated at his right hand and will come again to judge the living and the dead. Our whole life depends on what Jesus did on earth.

We have to follow him over and above any other celebrity whom we are tempted to follow, for they are after all mere creatures and mortals. We should only imitate Jesus, view his life as written in the Word of God. Remember if we live as Jesus lived, we will surely get a thousand likes from above, from an entire company of angels and saints. This should be our passion and goal.
To try on new trends of the Holy Spirit rather than fashion trends. For the earthly things should be superseded by the immortal things. The mortal will bring doom but the immortal will bring life.

To believe in all that is good and spiritual, in the treasures of the kingdom against those who have a knack of spreading false news, gossip and defamation. Still worse those who readily believe in the lies of others only for a bit of juicy entertainment.
They believe without seeing and harm the reputation and honour of others.

If we have to believe without seeing, then let us only believe in the Risen Lord. In the marks of the nails on his hands and feet. Believe, trust and know that he
who was to come has already come and will come again with his angels at the final coming.
We should scatter more of our virtues around for others to pick up and trend. At the same time we in turn must pick up as well the right and holy trends of others which will benefit our souls.
This, will lead to a vogue which can never be out dated, a fashion that will rule for ages, a style that will make stylish our hearts and souls to one day grace the beautiful party in heaven.
Let us make sure that we follow Jesus in life and in death and unfollow all that will lead us away from him. 

 Maria Franco