IDK…BFO (10/06/2025)

Abbreviations abound in the modern era and communications. Young people are coining them faster than older people can learn them. But sometimes, we ancients can be creative ourselves.

While traveling to a Notre Dame game in South Bend a few years back, my sister Betty and her kids and grandkids were texting between cars. My sister texted her youngest daughter with a question about plans. My niece responded simply, “IDK.” My sister didn’t understand. So, she texted back, “What does that mean.” My niece wrote, “I don’t know.” The lines were quiet for just a minute. Then they buzzed with a new text. My sister wrote, “BFO.”  The younger generations were perplexed. Finally, one of them admitted the obvious, “What does that mean?” And my sister gleefully responded, “Better find out.”

Communication continues to be one of our greatest gifts as well as challenges. In our modern era, there is so much communication that at times we are overwhelmed by it. There is such a thing as “too much information” and “too much communication.” We’re learning that more isn’t always better, sometimes it is simply more.

We are called by our LORD to communicate with one another lovingly, supportively, kindly. Yesterday, I spent 30 minutes on Facebook and realized that so much of it isn’t positive, loving, building, constructive communication but rather negative, hateful, divisive, and destructive. And we need to be not only aware of that but proactive about it.

How do we as a society, as humanity, turn this around? How do we shed the need for “likes” and focus on loving care and on building one another up? How do we move from a fetish for posting selfies to the ability to put the needs of others before our own and to work to build up the living Body of Christ rather than worry about how many followers we have?

IDK. But as my sister suggested, maybe we BFO. Probably a good place to start is putting our devices down and quietly reach out to our loving and present LORD for direction, for inspiration, for grace. Maybe we don’t know, but the LORD does. So, it probably is the best place to turn is we are on a BFO mission.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.