Yesterday was one of those days when globalization just seemed to reach up and slap me in the face. My niece from a small East Texas town who has traveled relatively little tags me in a post on facebook from a market in Zambia where she is on a short term mission trip. My husband shows me an article in the paper explaining how Hindus in Texas are
Americanizing their religion. My son in West Africa texts me while I am in church. My phone is on because I am tweeting the sermon. And then I realize that with the arrival of Google+, I am probably in need of learning how to use yet another media tool. Why go to the trouble? Quite simply, technology is getting the job done. Tasks that were impossible a few years ago are now not only possible, but are capable of uniting more people in worthy efforts than ever before!

One example is a new prayer effort spearheaded by Tomi Grover, Ph.D. of TraffickStop (www.traffickstop.org). Interstate 10 has been named by the FBI as the number one corridor for human trafficking in the US.  In response to this heinous use of a coast to coast highway, Dr. Grover has a vision to have churches, groups, and individuals praying for all points along Interstate 10 on the 10^th of each month at 10 a.m. or p.m. Kick off? Of course 10/10 i.e. October 10th. Just a few years ago this kind of effort would have been
virtually impossible to pull off without a lot of personal travel, phone calling, letter writing, etc. Now the word is getting out via websites, facebook, twitter, and other social media. A few years ago, joining others meant displacing oneself perhaps at inopportune moments. Today, people can join together in the prayer effort via conference calls, chat rooms, twitter, facebook, live meetings, etc. Measuring the response and keeping participants
updated would have been a seemingly overwhelming challenge. Social media, electronic mailing, online work stations, phone apps and dare I say….Google Earth…will easily keep all those involved up to date and able to know what the next step is. In all of my 25 years of mission service, I never imagined that we would be able to join with so many in a real time concert of prayer. I plan on following the twitter group to see how and what others are praying. I might even host a chat room or conference call. So much for those prayer letters that took weeks to get to the US!

I do hope you will join in this prayer initiative. I also hope that as technological creativity proliferates so many possibilities, that we the people of God will learn to use it to the praise of God’s glory. Someone called me “tech savvy” this week. Tech savvy? No. Tech appreciative. Yes.