If you are a Path or Facebook user, you have a timeline and that timeline is supposed to be a fairly accurate representation of the major, and minor, events in your life as well as a running commentary of your thoughts and interactions.
Recently, it dawned on me that I could include major prayer requests and key verses there too while also keeping them private.
Path was the first to allow this type of private post and Facebook soon added the feature. This allows you to essentially post things to yourself. The upshot of this is that you can now include private items like questions you’re struggling with, key prayer requests, and things you’re hearing from the Lord in your timeline.
This might sound a little unnecessary at first but the truth is that our timelines are growing every day and starting to become the most detailed record of our lives available anywhere. In fact, even now, it’s fun to look back through posts from previous months and years. Wouldn’t it also be great to see our prayer concerns and revelations recorded there as well?
I”m not suggesting that our timelines become replacements to prayer journals and the like but perhaps spiritual milestones should be recorded on our timelines along with other snapshots of our day to day digital lives.
It’s easy enough to do. In Path, simply select the small padlock icon when composing a post. In Facebook, select the “Only Me” option for private posts.
What do you think? Is this something you might start doing?
Really interesting idea. I wish that the timeline could be sorted to show “only me” items though. I wonder for how long I’d even see the posts in a crowded Facebook timeline.
The one thing that might be a red flag is the fact that even “only me” items on Facebook aren’t truly private as we’ve seen Facebook play pretty loose with their privacy settings. I wonder if it’s not a personal violation of confidence to put a private prayer request in an “only me” post on Facebook. I just don’t trust Facebook enough for that I don’t think!