My Last Google

My Last Google

Breakups are hard. Whether you’ve been together a month or a dozen years, you can expect to grieve the loss of a relationship. (If you don’t grieve it, maybe you didn’t have a relationship.)

Once, on a Resurrection Sunday, Google and I parted ways. And I have grieved. Google was fast. Familiar. Convenient. We got on well.

But when I turned on my computer that afternoon and was greeted by a doodle honoring the eighty-sixth birthday of farm workers’ organizer Cesar Chavez, I was done. Chavez has been dead for twenty years or so. But for a couple of thousand years, the holiday celebrated that year on March 31 has been someone else’s day—and he is risen and alive. His name is Jesus. He is the Messiah of the Jews, the Savior of all peoples, the once-for-all propitiation for sinners of every stripe, and the one whom more than two billion Christians call Lord.

I may or may not choose to celebrate Cesar Chavez. But I worship Jesus Christ. And while I don’t expect the powers that be at Google to agree with me on that, common decency would seem to suggest that placing a Messiah-like drawing of anyone other than the Son of God on Google’s home page on Easter Sunday is at best in poor taste and at worst a mean-spirited poke in the eye to every single Christ follower on the planet.

The day may be coming when following Jesus is cause not only for ridicule in the public square but also for persecution at every turn. A day when Christians are not simply deemed intolerant and thus are marginalized but are also caused to suffer injustice and violent opposition to their faith. It will certainly not be the first time. If that day comes for me, I pray I will have the strength to not just stand, but to also love my enemies well. And to remember that Jesus has already been crowned King of kings and Lord of lords.

One day, a light will dawn in the gathering clouds . . . and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, no matter whom Google exalts.

Awesome is God from his sanctuary; the God of Israel—he is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God!

Psalm 68:35, ESV