Ecclesiastics 3:11

Josiah Parr

One of my favourite films of all time is "Gladiator" starring Russell Crowe. In the opening sequence the character of the General (Crowe) gives a call to battle, which is "What we do in this life echoes in eternity." I believe this to be completely true; what we do with our lives has eternal value.

Ecclesiastics 3:11 God has set eternity in the heart of man.

More than nine million people in Britain are signed up to Facebook, Twitter and Myspace leading Europe with number of users. Sites like these give us a huge platform to let the world know how we are feeling and what we have been doing. It's basically a public diary of our life.

I recently read an article speculating what historians in 100 years will make of these sites. Although there will definitely be a wealth of knowledge to be accessed about our current culture and way of life, the writer joked about the fact that the researchers would have to spend millions of hours sifting through videos of cats doing silly things and photos of drunken parties.

Christians are called to be 'in the world but not of it,' and this is never truer than on Facebook. We need to be extra careful with what we say on Facebook because it will live on the pages of the Internet forever.

Forever is a very long time. Kind of like eternity.

When we give an account for our lives, how will Heaven evaluate our Facebook status? I'm not saying that God is shallow and can't forgive but I am asking the question - 'How costly is grace?'

Society is waking up to this and requiring people to be accountable for things written on Facebook. On 26th February 2009 a young girl in Essex was sacked from her job as a secretary for comments she had made on Facebook and she is definitely not the only person to have lost her job for that reason.

Will your next Facebook status, or next twitter be worthy of eternity, or will it forever clog the pages of the Internet with junk! Its time we use our digital world as an opportunity to show the goodness of God, one friend of mine has decided to use her Facebook as a way of encouraging her friends in their faith and to help her non-Christian friends find direction. To me this is the best way we can use Facebook for God's glory!