[Monday's Devotional] - Twittering Hope

I thought that I would base this week's devotionals around the use of online social media. I was very "anti" when my wife first set up a Facebook account some years ago, but then I got my own and have never really looked back. There are, of course, dangers and pitfalls with using online social media and we will look at some of these this week, but I want to focus on the positive aspects of it for us as Christians too.

I only recently started using Twitter, I rarely 'tweet' my own thoughts, but often 'retweet' the thoughts of others that I find inspiring. Twitter allows me to hear the thoughts of national church leaders and enables me to be more informed about the issues facing us as a nation and beyond. More than that, I find it incredibly encouraging to be able to connect with what the rest of the Body of Christ is doing in our nation and beyond in a way that would be impossible just a few years ago. I get great encouragement from hearing the thoughts of…

Canon Andrew White: @vicarofbaghdad

Nicky Gumbel: @nickygumbel

John Sentamu: @JohnSentamu                          to name, but a few.

I get updates on issues facing Christians today from…

General Synod - CofE: @GenSyn

Christian Concern: @CConcern

and for an extra dose of inspiration, we get a daily dose of C.S Lewis' wisdom from

C. S. Lewis: @CSLewisDaily

To get a flavor of the sort of thing that gets attached to tweets I include a link below. This was tweeted by Steve Chalke and shows what London based church did on 'Good Friday' to worship and raise funds for a local foodbank.

http://bit.ly/YLueT5

You can follow people on twitter without ever tweeting anything yourself and just receive the thoughts of great people. 

For prayer…Thank God for the benefits of ICT, use them wisely and fully.

Have a great day.

John Martin-Jones