The Social Network

It seems like our Lenten journey has already begun, being with Job for the last few weeks.

Heidi and I watched The Social Network last night. My mom and I went to The King's Speech on the day it won Best Picture. I was surprised by how many Oscars The Social Network got and it had been sitting on my desk from Netflix for weeks. I was a sociology/anthropology major in college, so it had me at hello.

A Harvard sophomore decided 8 years ago that something like Facebook should exist, just for the elite of that fine Boston school. Once it started to catch on (i.e. immediately), he decided to expand to other colleges across the nation and then around the world. When I got my Facebook account the month before we moved to Quincy, there were 500 million members, representing the 3rd largest "nation" in the world.

Why does our global culture need Facebook? Connections. Mark's best friend and co-founder of Facebook was a business major and saw the potential for advertizing. That wasn't Mark's original intent. Facebook is now worth $25 billion. Mark is the youngest billionaire on the planet. Unfortunately, greed tore their friendship apart.

Job says, "Learn the basics. God is sovereign. He holds all things in his hand. Do you think that you have to grow old before you understand life? True wisdom and real power belong to God; from him we learn how to live, and also what to live for."

Why are we on the planet? To become rich and famous? No. There is a Famous One. We are to connect to him, learn from him, live for him and, along the way, connect to one another.

Welcome to Lent.