On the way to information overload
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels
I love information. I tend to gather it — piles of it, megabytes of it. One day, while sitting in the middle of books and Bibles, with so many Web pages open the tabs measured barely a quarter of an inch, I heard the Spirit say: “What do you love more? To study or to learn?” Because they’re not the same thing.
Do I want Him to teach me so I can know more, or so I can follow more closely? Is a face buried in a book an acceptable substitute for feet that follow Him? I think not. The value of knowing His ways is in walking them out. Lord help me.
Once, while studying Isaiah, I decided I needed to know where Seir was. I was sure that knowing the geography would help me understand the book. I found a website full of history, timelines, and maps. (Oh, how I love maps!) It was a beautiful site, an informative site, a frustrating site. I could barely see the content for all the ads popping up. But, they promised, for just $10, I could access a plethora of information, ad-free. So I paid the money. I received the link. They sent me a receipt. I was happy. But my study time was up.
Later I made my way back to the site to see what I could find. I entered my e-mail. I entered my username. I entered my password. And clicked.
And clicked. And clicked. And clicked again. Nothing. Nothing but pop-ups. Finally, one pop-up popped up far enough for me to see the message beneath: “Incorrect password.” I doubted it — I’d had Google populate it for me — but maybe we’d made a mistake. So I tapped “Forgot your password?” navigated around the ads, retyped my e-mail address, entered my username, and tapped “Reset.” You know the drill.
Their response? “There is no account associated with this e-mail address.” Really?? They had sent a receipt to an e-mail address they didn’t have?!? I looked for their contact information. There was none. No Help menu. No customer service. Nada. So I composed an e-mail, complete with screenshots of the e-mails they had sent to an e-mail address they didn’t have, knowing full well that the address they used to confirm the address they didn’t have may very well be an address that can send but not receive, and the e-mail I was sending was ending up somewhere where no one would ever see it — the digital “black hole.”
By this time, I was exhausted. Mad. My fists clenched, my chest constricted, I was saying nasty things to careless people who couldn’t care less that their ads were covering the information I needed to get to the information I wanted. And now, not only did I not know the location of Seir, I couldn’t remember why I cared.
And at that moment I gleaned a bit of information far more valuable than the location of Seir. I realized where I was, and it wasn’t anywhere on the Father’s map for me.
Guinean proverb: Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand.
Comments