Between blogging and Facebook and Twitter, many people have turned to the internet to express themselves in very personal yet very public ways. Chances are good that you are doing this in some way yourself. Yet what do we really wind up saying? What we’re eating? Where we are going? How our favorite sports team is doing and why that dramatically impacts our ability to cope with life? With all the possible avenues of communicating, in the end we often wind up saying very little. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
In his book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, John Piper talks about how Christians use their emotions. Prevailing wisdom today says that our expression needs to be raw and unchecked if it is going to display authentic feeling. However, the most powerfully emotional book in the Bible, Lamentations, literally the book of mourning or wailing, is also one of the most formally constructed. In its 5 chapters, each consists of 22 stanzas, and the first four chapters use a literary device known as an acrostic. To put it mildly, this book is anything but raw and unchecked, and yet it does not fail to pour out with genuine, authentic emotion.
So, here is the idea: let’s take the accessibility of our social networking capabilities and combine that with the thought provoking formality of Lamentations to create a site where we can reflect on the glory of God Almighty within the constraints of 7-words. Call it Seven-Word Devotions, using seven short words to praise God’s character, to pray to him in hope or fear or doubt or sadness, to declare his majesty to the nations. An example we see in Scripture is when the prophet Isaiah is standing in the throne room before God and cries out, “Woe is me! For I am lost!” Only seven words, but it conveys so much. That is what I propose we do. It doesn’t even have to be original. It could be a song lyric or a quote from the Bible or just anything that causes you to reflect on the glory of God and the marvelous works of his hands. Seven words to express our hearts.
If you are interested in becoming a regular contributor to Seven-Word Devotions (http://7word.wordpress.com), please contact me at tburus@msn.com and I can set you up with access to post. If you would rather post your devotions as a visitor, you can simply add them as a comment to any of the posts already up on the site. Then before too long, we will have a site filled with short prayers of consecration directed to God, singing praises to his glorious name, and hopefully giving each other glimpses of his beauty that we may never have experienced on our own.
Please, join us in worshipping our great and wonderful God!