When Kolbie Sanders called off her wedding weeks before the big day, she decided to make someone else’s dream come true, giving away her wedding venue to a complete stranger in need.

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Techies build social media platforms so that we will become addicted to them. Social media money comes from advertisers who need proof of an audience. To get as many eyeballs as possible, techies studied the brain science surrounding addiction in other areas of our lives. Humans get addicted to alcohol, drugs, and gambling because they give us happiness. These chemicals or experiences of winning create dopamine which translates into a euphoria in us.

But happiness is not enough to keep humans addicted. We need light and shadow. There also has to be risk, a challenge, and a fight. Addiction is as much about the negative as it is about the positive.

Think about it. When a gambler wins, he wants to win more, which is completely understandable. But why would he go back when he’s losing? That defies logic.

It’s because he doesn’t want to leave the table a loser, he wants to make it right. He wants to win back his money. So, both the winning and losing draw him into the addiction.

The same thing happens to us during an argument on social media. We want to make things right, to say the right thing to persuade the other, or to dominate them in order to win. We don’t want to walk away a loser, so we become hooked.

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Bishops C Fitzsimons Allison, Mark Lawrence, and Alden Hathaway at the recent concluded diocese of #SouthCarolina Clergy conference (Greg Snyder photo) #theology #encouragement #parishministry pic.twitter.com/syb7CObGe2

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) October 24, 2018

When she was a child and early teenager Farrah Turner, better known as Maxine to her family and friends, would spend summers going to a nursing home in Lake City, South Carolina, to give elderly people company and comfort. Even in her youth, Turner felt a duty to serve her community, her cousin Britney Weaver said.

“Her goal has always been this sense of community and to bring people together and give back,” said Weaver, now an attorney. “She wore many different hats in the community because that was what was fulfilling to her.”

Turner died Monday, 19 days after a man ambushed sheriff’s deputies and investigators who went to search a home near Florence, South Carolina. Turner was one of those investigators. Family members described her as faithful, devoted and funny, who made a real impact on people’s lives.

Tributes poured in from around the country for the officer who had been in critical condition for almost three weeks since the shooting.

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‘Always going to feel her presence.’ Family, community were life of ambushed officer https://t.co/jxTZGkVPzz pic.twitter.com/2R4vU5BqV3

— The State Newspaper (@thestate) October 23, 2018

He added: “American culture is probably the least Christian culture that we’ve ever had, because it’s so materialistic and it’s so full of lies. The whole advertising world is just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst instincts we have. The problem is, people have been treated as consumers for so long they don’t know any other way to live.”

Mr. Peterson’s entire pastoral career unfolded in a single small church that he founded in 1963: Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Md., a suburban town of 8,000 northeast of Baltimore. Affiliated with the Presbyterian Church USA, his parish began with a few dozen people; decades later it had only 500 members and Sunday service attendances of about 250.

He liked to be called Pastor Peterson or Pastor Pete. “Ours was an informal congregation, and except for the children and youth, most of the people in it were older than I and addressed me by my given name, Eugene, which was fine by me,” Mr. Peterson wrote in “The Pastor: A Memoir” (2011).

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The Rev. Eugene H. Peterson, a Presbyterian minister who challenged the mass marketing of Christian evangelism and wrote a shelf of books on religion — notably “The Message,” a series that recast the Bible into everyday English — has died https://t.co/uzuulm3IvF

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) October 24, 2018

Choose your words carefully.

Relevance is irrelevant.

Pastoral ministry is serious, consequential work.

There is no ministry in the abstract.

Every step is integral to your journey.

Christ is all we have to offer.

Reject grandiosity.

Sabbath is a gift.

Read them all.

We loved Eugene Peterson. Here's what we remember most about this pastor's legacy https://t.co/ATyV5dk3ej

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) October 24, 2018

The Reverend Darren Howie is a former thief and was addicted to heroin.

He spent a decade in and out of prison – and was once told by a prison chaplain, when he weighed just six-and-a-half stone, that he would die once he left prison.

However, Mr Howie got clean through a Christian rehabilitation programme….

Read it all and watch the whole video.

You are never beyond the love and redemption of God. To think otherwise is a perverse idolatry.

The ex-heroin addict who became a priest – BBC News https://t.co/s4JjqDSiRH

— Fr. SJM-C+ (@FatherSJMC) October 23, 2018

O God, who through thy Son Jesus Christ hast promised a blessing to the meek upon earth, take from us all pride and vanity, boasting and forwardness; and give us the true courage that shows itself by gentleness, the true wisdom that shows itself by simplicity, and the true power that shows itself by modesty; for Christ’s sake.

–Robert W. Rodenmayer, ed., The Pastor’s Prayerbook: Selected and arranged for various occasions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960)

Do not forsake me, O LORD! O my God, be not far from me! Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation!

–Psalm 38:21-22