If the Holy Spirit Tweeted

Yesterday, in our interactive service, talk turned to Twitter.  Our pastor printed out a Twitter primer.  One of our members pointed that people who already know about Twitter don't need the primer, and the rest of us are not likely to use it at all.

I am in the middle.  I know about Twitter, but I'm not on Twitter.  Those of you who read my work, whether blogging or otherwise, know that my writing tends to go on (and on and on) for more than 140 characters.

But more than that, there's only so much time in a day, and while I understand the advantages of being active in every language of technology that comes along, I'm drawing some boundaries.  I don't want to be a person who is so busy tweeting my life that I forget to live it.

I figured out early on that Twitter is more ideal for people who have their smartphones with them at all times--that's not me.  And I'm not sure how tweeting would help my professional life.  One person yesterday said, "You could get more people to read your blog!"  But the amount of time it would take to develop a following leaves me tired.

We also talked about the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit communicates.  Maybe today the Pentecost rushing wind and the tongues of flame would come in the form of a tweet.  Would we even notice?

People who are on Twitter talked about how to find material again with bookmarks and likes and such.  I asked about who controls the data--"it's in the cloud!" I was told by an enthusiast.  We so often forget that the cloud is a big network of servers and data storage--and someone owns those elements.  We forget that the Defense Department was the original creator of the Internet, and while now we are welcome to use the network for our tweeting and our purchasing of more stuff than is good for us, that may not always be the case.

I'm not a Luddite, although I realize I may sound like one.  I just want us all to think about the larger pictures, the ones that hover in the background, off center, so that we don't notice them.