Does God Tweeter?

While watching one of those nightly entertainment news shows recently, I was amazed how powerful a medium the internet has become to our modern culture. Apparently, the latest teenage heartthrob/singing-sensation decided to retaliate against an overzealous fan who had enough ingenuity to get the singer's cell phone number after hacking into the celebrity's best friend's Facebook page. The fan then called the pop singer from his cell phone. However, the young star did not find the prank amusing, and he immediately posted the prankster's phone number on his Tweeter page. The singer then “tweeted” all his “followers” to call him at that number right away. The story said the kid's cell phone literally rang every second for days, and his cell phone did not have enough memory to record the thousands of voice mails he received during that time.

The current Twitter craze is just another example of our society's microwave mentality driven by our constant need of immediate gratification---right now. For those of you not familiar with Twitter.com, it's like text messaging on-line, only the tweets are limited to 140 characters or less. With few exceptions, all celebrities, movie stars and sports stars have a Twitter page. It's a convenient way to update their thousands of followers immediately on anything from where they're going to lunch, to how good it feels to finally be out of jail after serving time for violating their substance abuse probation.

Then I asked myself: “If God truly meets us where we are and would use any means to get our attention, would He tweet or not? The answer of course is He tweets every second we breathe; we just can't hear Him. Because we're so preoccupied by what's going on in the real world, we neglect to pay attention to our interior life, where He prefers to talk to us. Like Elijah in the cave, we hear the heavy wind outside; we witness an earthquake and then fire, thinking is God talking, but the Lord is not there. He speaks to our hearts in a “small still voice,” (1 Kings 19:12).

The real question is not whether or not God has a Twitter account, but why don't we truly follow His every prompt with the same solicitude and deference we give to our favorite actor, pop singer or franchise player? Possibly because to be a faithful follower of Christ takes a conscious effort and discipline, and most of the time Jesus gives us no immediate feedback to gauge our progress in the spiritual life.

I have close friends who have left the church. They tell me in all sincerity that they don't get anything out of the Mass. It's boring, and God doesn't speak to them at church. Well, my response to that is maybe God is telling them to work on the same issue over and over again, and Jesus has nothing new to say until they work on that issue first.

God's Twitter page expands the ages. Scripture, the Church as it teaches, Mass and our neighbors are the subjects of His tweets. He even gives us the food for strength to tweet back to Him:

Take this and eat it: This is my body which will be given up for you. Take and drink: This is the cup of my blood. Do this in memory of me.