Evening Prayer: Social Media and Community

Dear God of Love and Justice,

Tonight I hold my phone in one hand and this prayer in the other, and I confess that most days the phone wins. I scroll past the faces of neighbors I have never met, past news stories that should break my heart but barely slow my thumb. Amos cried out, "Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream" — yet so often my feed is a stagnant pond of outrage and performance, and I have added to its stillness.

Forgive me, Lord, for the times I typed a comment sharper than any word I would speak across a dinner table. Forgive me for mistaking a "like" for genuine love, a share for actual sacrifice. You who knit community in upper rooms and along dusty Galilean roads — You never intended fellowship to be measured in followers.

Teach me to use these strange digital tools the way You used a well in Samaria: to stop, to look someone in the eye, to ask a real question and stay for the honest answer. Let my posts carry the weight of hesed — Your steadfast, covenant love — not the hollow echo of a slogan. Where algorithms reward division, make me a peacemaker. Where feeds amplify fear, let me speak the stubborn truth of hope.

And when I set this phone down tonight, move my feet tomorrow toward an actual doorstep, an actual table, an actual person whose name You already know. In the name of Jesus, who never once went viral but changed the entire world, Amen.