Neighborhood Meeting (08/29/2024)

Our cable went out yesterday shortly after 5. With no evening news to watch, I walked outside to fetch the daily mail and ran into a neighbor. She, too, was out because what she was doing was interrupted. We used the opportunity to catch up because it had been a while since we’d chatted. Then a third neighbor stepped outside and joined us. He’d just gotten a text that the cable was out until at least 8 p.m. He joined our impromptu neighborhood meeting just as a fourth neighbor came around the house and announced, “I came to tell you that Spectrum is out. I tried to call, but you weren’t answering.” We all laughed.

The event made me wonder if perhaps we are too dependent on our electronics and technology. As I sat at my desk later in the evening and looked up at the photo of Grandma Lena, I asked her, “What did you do to fill your time without all this stuff?” While she was mum on the topic, my mind was filled with a myriad of things that people used to do with their time. I considered for a moment that they were truly blessed not to have these distractions.

Technology isn’t bad. It is good. It is our use of it and addiction to it that is the problem. Can we use it when needed for the good of ourselves and others and then put it aside to spend time building our relationships with one another and with the LORD. Can we suspend our dependence on the connections possible with technology to savor and grow the connections with our LORD and with one another? Can we step away from technology to take time for personal reflection, for personal growth?

One of the greatest challenges, I have learned, of technology is that our addiction to it can actually isolate us. It is ironic that a means that can bring the world to us could also be the doorway to isolation. We aren’t meant to be isolated. We are created in relationship for relationship.

I saw all the possibilities. Today I hope to begin intentionally putting down the remote and turning off the computer to pick up instead some outreach to others.  

As we journey in faith, hope and love, may we daily remember our purpose in life and do all we can to protect that and to grow in that purpose. May our everyday be marked with time spent with our LORD, the source of our very being, and with one another.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.