Part 2: Instagramification
In her super awesome Australian accent, Christine Caine called it our obsession with the "instant snap and upload." She was, and now I am, referring to this generations' infatuation with instantaneous social media capabilities. Your dog digging a hole into your neighbor's backyard? Don't worry, you can snap and upload that pic long before Spot's little nose ever crosses that property line. Did your baby just say her first word? Forget calling her "dada" whose name was the first audible sound to ever escape her mouth, that would take way too much time. Insta video that awesomeness for all the world to see. In less than 10 seconds we have the ability to transport our entire fan club of followers into our backyard, our home, our car, and even our overseas vacation.
What an amazingly advanced age we live in where a world full of information is at our instant beck and call. And all is good and fine until you see that little status bar at the top of your news feed come to a halt, or until you open your Instagram only to see that little loading circle of spite staring back at you. If you're like me, at that point you want to close out all your apps, consider writing a strongly worded letter to someone at the corporate office about why Instagram shouldn't be allowed to use the word 'insta' if it's going to take so long, and immediately look up the Apple helpline phone number because there MUST be something wrong if your phone is asking you to actually WAIT on something to happen. After all, we just don't have time to wait on anything these days.
Major problem. As a whole, our generation does not know how to wait for anything. I mean, why should we if we are paying a premium to have faster everything? To mention the words "dial-up" to anyone younger than 20 is like mentioning the words "Pony Express." They've probably heard of it before, but only in the history books. We've slowly done away with anything that requires us to wait. We are slowly doing away with the concept of delayed gratification. Our culture says if you don't want to wait until you're married to have sex, do it now. If you don't want to wait until you've earned your own money, take someone else's! If you are tired of waiting to be promoted, manipulate your way to the top! Why put in work for something you could pay to have handed to you?
Often times, we slash our way through shortcuts for the sake of expediency and instant gratification and we destroy the thing we are longing for because we take it too early. If you pick an orange before it is ripe, you aren't going to possess anything worth eating. If a woman goes into labor before the baby has come full term, there may be fatal consequences for the child. It seems like these days we don't care about anything enough to wait for it but the reality is that anything worth having is worth waiting for. The Kingdom of God is a lot about waiting. In fact, as a believer in Jesus Christ, I find my hope in the waiting.
If God were to hand me the fruition of every one of my dreams this very moment, I promise that I would destroy them long before I had the opportunity to enjoy them. Why? Because God is still developing me, molding me, and refining me so that when the time comes, I will be able to be a good steward of my dreams. I am encouraged in my waiting to pursue God and to desire things on his terms. Culture is telling me that if I can't have it now, it's not worth my time, but Jesus whispers that if it's not worth my time, it's probably not worth it.
