Having done lots of walking since the lockdown arrived – and thank goodness for the freedom to exercise! – I’ve become Interested in what distance I’ve covered, how quickly or slowly, and so on. My brother, who has the whole of the Yorkshire Dales at his drive end, and who walks a lot more than I do, recommended the smartphone app he uses to record all this. It’s called Endomondo, and I downloaded the free version some weeks ago.
Well. I now have a whole range of statistics; and last week the ap congratulated me on my fastest-ever three kilometers, which I found slightly alarming. Yesterday it told me the gps signal had dropped off for five minutes. And it even calculates how much fluid I have used, and the calories I have expended. It’s all very well, but I’m beginning to feel as if I am under too much close scrutiny. The app knows exactly where I am and where I have been. It even records which way I have walked around Camp Hill Clump. It’s becoming a little sinister.
Christians have long been used to the notion that God knows our every thought, each hair of our head. Some stern Victorians used this idea threateningly: ‘Thou God seest me’, ran one sampler text. But the idea that God knows and understands each of us intimately is fundamentally reassuring. More so than the idea that an app does…
Fr John
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