They know me so well.
They know I drive a 2009 Nissan Altima.
They know I play the guitar. (Fortunately, they aren’t terribly clued in about my fumbling, stumbling skill level).
They know I am a grandfather.
They know I originally hail from Hilliard, Ohio.
They are intimately familiar with my on-line purchasing habits, regularly offering me similar items at lower prices (and better quality).
They know my political persuasions, my religious preferences, my sexual orientation, and my favored color palette.
Heck, the marketing trolls of the internet somehow even know that I have chronic right shoulder pain and occasionally (when I eat too late) experience nighttime bouts of acid reflux … a fact I have only ever discussed with Joan behind our closed bedroom door.
“How is it possible…” I ask, shaking my fist toward the heavens, “… that such total, uncaring strangers know me so WELL?”
But we all know the answer to that question, don’t we? This kind of deep, granular-level reconnaissance on each one of us is today’s coin of the realm.
Nothing is hidden from BIG DATA. BIG DATA is in charge of our lives. Your phone listens in on the conversation you had with your next door neighbor and then **SHAZAM!!** up pops an ad for beekeeping equipment on your news feed.*
It is a scary and unsettling reality of Life in the Connected Age.
And yet, in a perverse and twisted way, isn’t this also the answer to a prayer? What I mean is, haven’t each of us, starting at a very young age, yearned for someone to KNOW us?
No… we didn’t seek to be known for the purpose of being marketed at. But haven’t we each longed for someone to know us completely – head to toe – in order that we might have the experience of being LOVED… totally and unconditionally?
Because let’s face it; it takes no great depth of soul to take a shine to the online dating profile version of a person. But it takes something very close to divinity to love someone when every wart, freckle, and character flaw is exposed.
But THAT is exactly the love God offers us.
It is exactly the love we are wired to crave.
It is also exactly the love we are called to offer one another.
Abundant blessings;
- an actual event in my life
Russellings of the Spirit 
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