Gene Shelburne: Communicating Across Oceans—and even more
One morning last summer I needed some information that I knew my friend and fellow-columnist Mike Haynes probably could provide, so I emailed him.
Mike’s reply was almost instant, but to my amazement it came all the way from Scotland. He and his wife were vacationing there, and he had received my email on his cell phone.
So he texted his answer to me by sending me an email via his phone. This brief exchange blew the mind of a digital dodo like me.
Back in the early 1960s when my oldest brother began his missionary career in Malawi, Africa, communication like that would have been unthinkable. Telephone calls between continents in those days were exorbitantly expensive (and our incomes were painfully sparse), so the only calls we exchanged were urgent reports of family tragedies. We might call to say, “Grandma died last night,” but we never dialed to say, “Happy birthday!”
My brother and I exchanged cassette tapes we recorded to each other while we roamed the areas where we ministered, but those messages would be at least two weeks old before postal folks delivered them on either side of the Atlantic. Those tapes blessed us. They kept us connected. But our families went for years without hearing each other’s live voices.
I’m sure you agree with me that in so many ways today’s instant and almost unlimited digital communication is a blessing.
Without it, my lady and I would not be able every week to see the smiles and hear the giggles of our toddler grandkids in Oklahoma and the great-grands in Tennessee. But even when I was a just a runt—back when Batman and Dick Tracy were the only characters with walkie-talkie digital devices, the holy Scriptures assured us that we didn’t need a technological gizmo to talk to God and to be heard instantly. To me, this has always been an amazing truth: that the Creator of heaven and earth will listen when I talk to him. That’s what the Bible promises. Psalm 34:17 says, “The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them.” This is what God himself promises. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face,” God assures us, “then will I hear from heaven” (2 Chron. 7:14). What a blessing we Christians have. Like the apostle John, we can say with confidence, “We know that he hears us.”
Gene Shelburne may be addressed at 3516 Carlton Dr., Amarillo, TX 79109 or at GeneShel@aol.com