Words from WW Blog

 ^“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts…” (Acts 2:46)

A close friend razzes me about responding to a text or message with a thumbs-up emoji. After all, he says, “I’m baring my soul or giving reactions to what you’ve written, and what do I get in return? An emoji!”

He pronounces “emoji” like it’s a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman who has disturbed his Sunday afternoon nap. He’s got a point.

If someone writes an email with several lengthy paragraphs that include their heart cry, pain, or confusion, responding with an emoji is a bit insensitive. Although there may be considerable thought behind that heart emoji, the receiver doesn’t know that. He assumes that the sender gave as much thought to it as the price of a loaf of bread.

Sadly, we’ve become an “emoji culture.” Pressing on an image takes a fraction of a second, whereas writing words with sincerity, thoughtfulness, and concern takes time. Symbolically, many of us have an enormous number of emoji relationships, but only a few of the people we communicate with are friendships of substance. Some might argue that we have so many superficial relationships that we don’t have time to invest in any of them. Healthy relationships, that is, relationships that have emotional depth, meaning, and value, require time. Like a savory stew that needs to simmer, something important needs patience and attention. Fully present, that’s the term.

Jesus was fully present. Can you imagine if He had responded to the leper with a crying emoji or to Simon Peter’s words, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” with an emoji facial expression of “Wow!”? Thank God, no one has compiled an emoji bible that replaces Jesus’s red-lettered words with wordless expressions of minimal matter.

Jesus was fully present, fully engaged. That modeling of the importance of hearing people’s heart cries and knowing them in more than a superficial way carried over into the early church. People were committed to one another. Even in the depth of their community, there were still the downfalls, such as Ananias and Sapphira. However, for the most part, they were connected. In fact, they were so intimately connected they were known for their sense of community.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that being closely committed means that we need to be wordy. Like one of my theology books from my seminary days, where a paragraph could be so long that I’d fall asleep before the ending, wordiness does not necessarily mean depth and a solid foundation. I don’t need to respond to my friend’s observation, affirmation, or heart cry with an analysis that resembles a thesis statement. The question to ask myself is, “Does he feel like I’ve heard him?”

In fact, some of us, like in the old days, may simply need to pick up our phone and call.

Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized

This entry was posted on March 6, 2024 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: communication, emoji, emojis, Life, technology

You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.