In an issue of Christianity Today, Jen Wilkin writes of an unexpected lesson from Facebook:

Facebook decided to kick off (the new year) with a challenge: Compare your first profile picture to your most recent one to see how hard aging hit you over the past ten years.

I pulled up my first profile picture and stared at it, the air exiting my lungs and an odd numbness seeping up from my toes. Hello, fresh-faced person. I remember you. I remember that shirt, the wallpaper in that kitchen, that haircut. I also remember the night I uploaded you, lightheartedly filling in my Facebook profile with enough information for my identity to be stolen and my house to be robbed.

Imagine if it had been possible to post a picture of your heart (10 years ago), laid next to another (now). A spiritual angiogram, before and after, a trajectory of the growth or decline of wisdom itself. What would it show? Would you want to post it?

This is what I thought as I sat at my computer, contemplating the face of a younger self. I have not stopped thinking about it since. Who says social media can’t make you wise? Facebook invites us to count the lines on our faces, but wisdom reads between those lines.