Saturday, March 14, 2015

One Word, Five Voices: Search

Searching for something isn't all that hard these days, is it?

A few weeks ago, I was trying to remember the movie Ryan and I saw on our second date, and the name was escaping me. I remembered the actors, even the premiss, but could not pry the name of the film out of my brain. One 20-second Google search on my phone and success! (It was American Outlaws in case you were interested).

There's really no longer much struggle in searching—at least for little daily things. What was that recipe my kids loved so much last month? Google. How long would it take to drive to the beach? Google. What was that verse my friend shared with me about hardship? Google.

It's easy to find the answers we need to most things now, but is that always better? Recently, I heard a radio host cite some study where researchers said smart phones were making us bad problem-solvers. When all you have to do is pull out your phone for an answer, the study concluded that most people don't even try to think critically.

It made me wonder if the "easy search" is hurting us in other ways, too. When there's no struggle over searching for something, what do we really learn in the process? Sometimes, struggling through something can build character, make us stronger, help us learn, grow our faith.

Now I don't know how much searching through a cookbook for that recipe my kids loved would build character as opposed to doing a Google search, but I do know that searching through my bible for that verse from my friend is going to help me learn more than Googling it.

Sometimes, being made to search teaches us more than we even knew we needed to learn.


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 Check out what my friends think of today's word on their blogs: ShawnHeatherSteph and Brian.


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