I’m in touch with a lot of people, mostly around North and Latin America. Here’s what I learned from FaceBook and other media this week. It was an eye-opener to read postings fr
om various friends, and to see what we write about. Please, no intended criticism intended for anyone, since my FB postings too are sometimes trivial.
From North American friends: remarks about the weather; purchases we need to make; sports; food, and its partner, exercise; movies and TV; political issues; family news; spiritual issues. Nothing particularly sinister, mind you, it’s all good wholesome stuff.
From outside of North America I’ve received in the last 48 hours: a note from a former student; she’s working with an isolated group of people in Guatemala, and a boy who uses a prosthetic leg has outgrown it and needs another – there are no resources to get one; another friend, in Africa: “spent the afternoon on bumpy dirt roads in 90+ degree heat with a ministry partner trying to follow up on the status of a former victim of human trafficking [enforced prostitution, I imagine]; another friend who works with “children at risk,” working through issues of street children in India; another friend, a new transcultural worker, fighting through sleep deprivation as she tries to learn a second language; a student from ESEPA, where I teach, is just now organizing a trip to Honduras (18 hours in the bus each way) to help several isolated villages. The cost for each person who takes the trip is a mere $200, but there are a number of people who would like to go for whom that figure will be a lot of money.
What’s striking is that this is a normal day of FB postings and emails.
As I believe, there is One who sees the 7 billion of us all at one time. For me, I’ve got a list of about 550 FB friends, plus emails and other media – I get a very tiny glimpse of what people around the world are doing. But it’s plain that I’m looking at two worlds – one world where a person can live more or less anticipating that he/she will be able to eat, find a doctor, achieve literacy, buy a book, enjoy freedom of speech, conscience, religion, and so forth. In the other world, the people who cannot count on those privileges.
By the way, my impressions here are subjective and non-scientific, and I am not speculating on whether one group is being more reserved or forthcoming than another. Just take this for what it’s worth.
Far be it from me to tell one person that he/she has trivial concerns in comparison with others. Yet, I hope that my FB friends in North America will take a broad view of the globe; pledge themselves to be grateful to be where they are; seek to focus on the crippling issues that others in the world face, problems not of their own making; put their resources to the benefit of those who cannot crawl out of their situation by their own effort or creativity.
I would also like to recommend to American Christians that they read an essay on how Christians in other countries are suffering (this month, particularly in Egypt). See “Martyrdom Fantasy Camp” at https://openoureyeslord.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/martyrdom-fantasy-camp/
Open Our Eyes, Lord! 
Hi Eric, I see your point. I may offer three observations.
My friends in the Two-Thirds World do post trivial things on FB as well, I think that’s what FB is there for in part.
People I know in, for example, Africa are working with the gospel and are in tune with suffering there in a way that an American businessperson might not be.
Also, someone pointed out to me that people don’t post really “raw” issues on FB. This is true, and that’s why I included email and other means of communication in my blog.