Lines of communication

Forty years ago, a letter took three days to wing its way from California to north-eastern Scotland. Postage wasn’t very expensive. Transatlantic phone calls had to go through an overseas operator, who rang back when she had a clear line and it was ringing. It cost a lot. £1/minute. Those were the two options for maintaining contact with my family, so my parents wrote to me, and I wrote to them, every Sunday, and we received the up-to-the-minute news the following Wednesday.

Today, a letter takes a week or more and may never even arrive. It costs a lot. I paid over £10 to send a small packet to my mother and it never arrived. E-mail is free and instant. Skype is free to a computer, pennies to a phone. I can skype Mom most days. The biggest obstacles are the time difference and her busy social life!

I haven’t even mentioned WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook, Instagram…

Getting in touch with God hasn’t changed, though. Call out to me, he invites us. Sit with me. Rest in me. Confess to me. Come away with me. Listen.

I love you, he says, and it echoes through my heart. It’s free, and it’s instant. Praise him.

Video off, Vision down

We scheduled the Skype call, always necessary to do when there are eight hours between us. A few minutes early, I turned Skype on and realised that the video call was not enabled. It was not possible on my laptop, which had updated a couple of days earlier. Something on the device has been altered so that it no longer has the ability to see the person to whom I want to talk.

Life serves us updates constantly. Things happen which alter our perspective, which can narrow our view and can even blind us. Maybe our experiences and hurts become so big in our own eyes that our shadow blots out an ability or even a desire to have a better understanding of other people. Maybe a trauma leaves a beam in our own eye.

Jesus talked about relationship blindness, where we become so focused on the splinters in other people’s eyes that we are unaware of the 2x4 beam in our own. Kindness and compassion fall victim to self-awareness. We retreat into ourselves and our spiritual eye of understanding is no longer enabled. It may happen gradually or all of a sudden. A series of downloads and updates or just one major event.

Jesus can take us back and restore our vision. Just as I believe it is possible to go back to a historical setting in a computer, to restore what it used to be, so Jesus can take us back to basics with him and restore our default settings: we were created in the image of God. That is our default setting, and God never stops loving, never stops forgiving, never stops giving us the benefit of the doubt. He is always kind.

Through the power of his Holy Spirit living in me, leaning heavily on Jesus, I can do the same.

Skype and the Lost Herd

I panicked.

A notification had flashed onto the Skype window during a conversation, advising me that I had just four more minutes until my subscription ran out. I didn’t even know I had a subscription. Alarmed, I finished the call and started searching everywhere for a clue and when none appeared, I thought I must need to change payment methods. Having done that, I then began to entertain doubts – doubts that the notification was legitimate, fears that some sort of scam was going on which would end badly for me. 

But then life interfered before I could do anything about it. A B&B guest arrived. A phone call came that Don would be back in 20 minutes with our sick friend who needed dinner between hospital visits. I was cooking a big trout and had no confidence that I knew what I was doing. I was struggling to sort out some other online issues.

Later, as the house grew silent and the clock ticked forward towards midnight, I waited in a queue to have an online chat with a technician who could reassure me. After an hour I was in touch with someone but within five minutes she had disconnected me (intentionally?) and I was back into another hour-long queue. Well, never mind, all’s well that ends well and the verdict was that the notification was legitimate. No scammers. This time.

We live in a fallen world full of pitfalls, some real and some imagined. Technology has only heightened the possibilities of getting into trouble, falling victim to some heartless predator. It can panic us into action as alarm bells clang and we race off down what may be a wrong road.

And then I read this. ‘See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power, and his arm rules for him. See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him. He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.’ (Isaiah chapter 40) 

What a comfort to be in God’s flock. The other morning I found the road full of most of a herd of cows and their calves and one great big bull, headed purposefully along the lane. I couldn’t see a farmer in charge and in fact it turned out there was no farmer in charge. Somehow the gates had swung open and the herd had moved through them. Without their farmer coming out and rounding them up, they would have been lost.

Without my God rounding his people, including me, up, I am lost. Without the reassurance of his care for me, I would often be in despair. I am so grateful for a powerful, loving God in whom rests all my hope and faith.