Back in December, hundreds of thousands of people liked, shared, and commented on a viral post from Bethel Music singer Kalley Heiligenthal, asking God to #WakeUpOlive after her toddler’s sudden death.
Amid discussions about our ultimate hope for resurrection and what happens when a miracle doesn’t come, people from around the world and across the church followed Heiligenthal’s daily updates on Instagram and lifted Olive up in prayer in a way that would have been impossible without social media.
The case of #WakeUpOlive is one of several major examples of how prayer requests have the potential to go viral in the internet age—and how we get drawn to pray for those far beyond our own communities. Reporter Maria Baer wrote about this very topic for this month’s issue of Christianity Today.
#WakeUpOlive came months after another family offered its own desperate prayers of Talitha koum—Jesus’ command in Mark, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” Lindsay and Dugan Sherbondy, who are a Christian artist and a pastor, shared in August about how their daughter suffered a brain injury in an accident and invited followers to pray for her healing. They used her name as a hashtag, #EvaLove.
In the initial posts, I was struck by their faith that God was using her miraculous survival and would heal her in instant at any point. As the weeks and months have gone on, the Sherbondys have been frank about the practical and spiritual challenges—their desperation to trust God’s goodness even when the process of healing seems so slow and difficult—but they are still turning to him.
Just this week, more than a quarter million people watched a video of 8-year-old Eva wiggling her toes on command, a wonderful sign of progress for her. “Thank you, IG family and IRL friends for your unceasing prayers. We’re desperate for them. Tell your KIDS that Eva is wiggling her toes and that their time spent praying MATTERS,” Lindsay wrote.
In the Sherbondys’ case, Lindsay had a major following among Christians because of her business, and they shared a lot of visuals in honor of Eva—pink sunsets and rainbows because they are her favorites; snapshots from friends and faraway little kids scribbling drawings from her; and a collection of Lindsay’s artwork inspired by her. I saw my friends and popular evangelical authors offering their own comments and prayers.
As Maria writes in her piece, it’s good for the body of Christ to get to come together on behalf of a family in need. Many have contributed prayers, words of encouragement, and financial support to a GoFundMe or to Lindsay’s business. But just as social media scrolling can take over other in-person habits, the trend also prompts us to ask: Are we just as eager to pray on behalf of those suffering in our own communities? Or those without popular campaigns on their behalf?
Maria goes back to one of the earliest viral giving and prayer campaigns on Caring Bridge and follows the trend through today—and what it tells us about how we approach prayer. Exploring the topic has made me grateful that Instagram has led me to pray for others (not merely a distraction!), but a closer look at these families’ lives has also given me deeper empathy for others in the wake of tragedy.
Kate
