Things You Can't Google

My wife, Heather, and I had an interesting conversation recently. We talked about how these days you can google just about anything. The idea of searching for everything you can imagine on google is so pervasive that “to google” has become an official verb in the dictionary.

While we were at our chiropractor for Heather’s monthly adjustment something strange happened.

I simply asked, “How are you doing?”

He responded, “Not good. My grandma just died. We were really close. I even lived with her for a while.”

I could tell things were not good indeed.

Recently, God has convicted me to not merely say, “I will pray for you (later).” Instead, I have been moved by the Spirit to pray immediately, in the moment, for the person. So, Heather and I huddled with our chiropractor in the tiny adjustment room and prayed. As we prayed, I made an assumption based on the chiropractor’s apparent faith: namely, that his grandma was a believer, too.

Heather later noted that this is probably the only thing we can’t google: the condition of someone’s heart, i.e. whether or not they have saving faith. We can search on the internet for someone’s marital status, address, criminal record, credit score, or favorite kind of pizza, but the condition of person’s heart is truly unknowable.

“The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?
I the Lord search the heart
and test the mind,
to give every man according to his ways
according to the fruit of his deeds.”
–Jeremiah 17:9-10

God alone knows the heart, so I have stopped trying to guess about what is going on with a person’s heart or mind. I try my best to use wisdom and discernment, but I have given up the business of soul-searching when it comes to anyone other than myself. I assume the best of people and believe and hope for the best, that someday everyone I meet will somehow meet Jesus (through me or someone else). I know this is a bit naïve and sounds like a pastor, but I don’t really care. It’s the only thing that I can believe and still sleep at night. I must rest on the sovereignty of God and that He alone can bring people to faith, not me.

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.”
–1 Corinthians 3:6

In life, it is hard to accept something as unknowable, beyond the limited reach of our frail human understanding. We like to think everything is just a click away, that Siri or Google have all the answers we will ever need.

So, what else is unknowable, unfathomable, mysterious and beyond the realm of Googliness (as they say in “The Internship”)?