andi oakes

Myspace, Bebo, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger - on and on goes the ever growing list of web sites that allow you to share something of your life with complete strangers all over the world. What is this obsession we seem to be developing for social networking sites?  What is it that makes us want to share everything from the most innocuous and mundane to the most painfully sensitive moments of our lives? Why are we becoming addicted to giving the world in general a running commentary on our daily lives?
You only have to type a random word or name into an internet search engine to discover the plethora of self published information that exists for such a huge swathe of the population of our world. You can read everything from the fantastically facile details of someone?s daily routine to heart wrenching insights into the personal fears, hurts and struggles of complete strangers; who interestingly enough seem less unknown to us by very fact they have shared something of themselves with us. And perhaps that's exactly the reason why our obsession with self publication is growing?
By uploading more and more of ourselves on to this most public of mediums we perhaps, in some way, become a little less invisible and a little more "known" by someone else. It seems that most of us, if not all, are driven by the simple desire to be "known"  - to be recognised and affirmed by our peers. It's what drives so many to put themselves through the ignominy of standing on a huge "X" on a floor in the desperate hope of being accepted by some panel of "experts". It's what pushes people onto reality television. It's what compels us to try and please those we admire the most or at least those whom we perceive to be the possessors of a greater influence than we ourselves have.
Perhaps it's just simply that we are all basically desperate? Desperate to be recognised; desperate to be seen; desperate to be accepted; desperate to be loved.

The words of a simple carpenter from a Hicksville, nowhere special, backwater town on the troublesome outer reaches of the most powerful Empire the world has ever seen. An uneducated labourer; unknown and unrecognised by the one's who had been diligently looking for him for generations and at one stage shunned by many of his own family and friends for being more than a little "off the wall" if not just plain "mad". And yet there was something about the way He walked through this world that draws our attention to Him. There was something about His brief sojourn among us that captivates our imaginations. How can someone so despised and ridiculed be so self-possessed and assured?

Jesus seemed to live His life on earth in the light of one simple piece of knowledge: that ever- loving eyes, all seeing and full of expectation and kindness were fixed upon Him perpetually - that even when he stood alone...He was seen.
Those eyes are on each one of us, right now. You and I are seen. You and I are known. You and I are understood completely by the One who is set upon loving us.
Look up my friend, my fellow Blogger and Twitterer - the stage is set, your audience is in place and your heart is exposed to the One who loves you more than you could ever comprehend.


* John 8 v 36
**John 13 v 3