Likes, Comments, Follows

 To like or not like? To comment or not comment? To follow or not follow? If you've ever been on social media for any amount of time (or know someone who is), then these questions may sound very familiar. If not, welcome to the world of social media! Over the years, there has definitely been an increase in social media use. Especially with everything going on with the pandemic in the last year, social media has been  the main way for people to meet, communicate, keep in touch, stay up to date with news and attend meetings and events online. On any given day, many posts and messages flood our timeline in a matter of minutes. As we're scrolling through the posts, we have a choice to make. We can stop and read it or keep scrolling past it. If we do stop to read it, we then have another choice. We can like it or comment or do neither of those. We may read it and move on. Is it okay not to respond to every post we see? Absolutely yes! It doesn't mean we didn't see it or read it. Then there's the choice of whether to follow a certain page or send/accept a friend request. Just because it's presented to us doesn't mean we have to accept or follow back. If it's not feeding your spirit in a positive way or uplifting you in any way, then it needs to be a no. I'm learning not to follow everything and stay away from drama, negativity and toxicity. I'm also learning to stay away from things that will feed comparison as I know that's something I've struggled with. If it makes me uneasy and causing me to think wrong, I don't need to go there. When choosing what to like, comment and follow, use wisdom (James 1:5) and make the right choice for you. Be sincere and have right motives. Don't follow and like just because everybody else is or to compete with someone else. Comments should be sincere and relevant to what the message is about. On the other side of this, we can't get caught up in how many likes, follows, and comments our posts get. The number of likes on our posts does not determine our worth. The number of follows we have does not determine how loved we are. In fact, here's a secret (or maybe not so much!): everyone who follows or like your posts do not want the best for you. Some do and some don't. Some want to see truly how you're doing and are encouraged by what you post. Others are waiting for you to fall or fall apart. In other words, not everyone has right motives. That's alright though! My encouragement to you: keep posting messages that are positive and helpful because you never know who is reading them. Whether you get 1 like, 100 likes or no likes, what matters is that you share hope with others. What matters is that you send out encouragement to situations that seem dim and discouraging. One post could change someone's whole life! The likes, comments and follows can be good, but that's not what makes you or others amazing. We are amazing apart from all of that! I'm constantly reminding myself not to get caught up in who liked my post, how many likes (or loves or cares in Facebook's case) my posts gets, and how come it didn't get any or few likes. My worth is not in numbers and neither is yours. My hope is not in numbers and yours shouldn't be either. My worth and hope is in God alone. So likes, comments and follows can be all good when viewed in a healthy manner. Let's choose wisely. Let's post wisely. Let's like, comment and follow wisely. Let's choose to make a positive change one post at a time.