Google, it would appear, does not possess perfect knowledge of me (or my stuff).
Consider the Google-produced image that arrived in a “personalized” direct mail piece the other day, purporting to show my house. As sales pitches go, it would have worked a lot better to promote a tree-trimming service than potential savings on home insurance.
Hey…I recognize that tree…
That said, I took a measure of comfort in being invisible to “Google Street View” – at least for a frame or two of the tech giant’s image-capture system.
How about that? Maybe Google isn’t quite “all-knowing” after all. Look hard enough, and we can still find a teensy corner of our lives that feels like it’s “off the grid.”
Oops…just a bit off the mark.
More to the point: this advertisement’s flop in execution reveals a chink in Google’s armor – impressive as its systems always seem to be. I have to admit: Google somehow managed to get a lot of things right here, capturing an image, digitizing it, and then matching the correct front yard with the street address on the mailer that ultimately arrived at my doorstep.
Sure, this particular outcome may be laughable, but the algorithms behind it are good. Scary-good.
So why then is it important to discover a chink in Google’s armor?
Because it shows that as much as we think we know, there’s still a lot about life that lies beyond our comprehension. No matter how powerful the systems, no matter how impressive the apps, there’s always going to be a dollop of chaos in the mix too – some part of reality that even our most sophisticated equations cannot fully incorporate.
And into our inevitable experience of chaos steps Love. That’s the Holy One’s promise to us in this week’s scripture passages. We hear in the gospel parable about a God who is generous beyond our wildest imagining: “What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?”
And it seems the prophet Isaiah is well familiar with this same God, a Holy One who runs rings around even the most formidable apps any human can devise:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.
Don’t know about you, but I kinda like knowing that God’s got a handle on the chaos – even if at times it may seem that God is hidden from Google Street View.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 