Thought for Today
Genesis 2:18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner."
Proverbs 18:1 The one who lives alone is self-indulgent, showing contempt for all who have sound judgment.
Mark 3:32 . . . "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you." 33 And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."
I could not find the phrase ‘social isolation’ in the Bible. Admittedly, I cannot also find one of my favorite themes in ministry, ‘family of faith,’ by those exact words in the Bible. Yet, it is through the lens of ‘family of faith’ that I view almost everything in God’s Creation.
“The first transistor was successfully demonstrated on December 23, 1947, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. Bell Labs was the research arm of American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T). The three individuals credited with the invention of the transistor were William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The introduction of the transistor is often considered one of the most important inventions in history.” (en.wikipedia.org) I’m not sure when I was given my first transistor radio, but it was probably just a few years later. It was a ‘portable’ radio, i.e., I could insert batteries and it would play without being directly wired into a wall socket. That far back in ancient history, there was only one size battery for almost every use, the D cell battery. Of course, today I have numerous portable devices powered by a plethora of different sized batteries.
I wonder whether future historians and/or social scientists will designate the era from 1947 to 2025 as merely a portion of the Electronic Age or will give those decades their own identity as the Portable Age. Irrespective of that, those decades kicked off what has now resulted in our Digital Age. People everywhere are seemingly constantly linked with some electronic device providing them real-time access to everyone else in the world and to every event occurring anywhere in the world.
There is a certain irony in the fact that as this real-time connectivity has evolved, we see increasing reports of people everywhere, especially our youth, feeling more and more alone and isolated from reality. Is there some as yet unidentified inverse relationship between being electronically connected and feeling personally connected? I fear some historian or social scientist might read this and decide to name that inverse relationship the Henderson Factor! I would hate to be known in history for the current phenomenon we see so often reported of youth feeling isolated, alone, ostracized from each other and from the real world.
“National Night Out was established by Matt Peskin in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and has been held annually since 1984. In the United States, the event is sponsored by the National Association of Town Watch. National Night Out began simply with neighbors turning on their porch lights and sitting in front of their homes. The first National Night Out involved 2.5 million residents across 400 communities in 23 states; National Night Out 2016 involved 38 million residents in 16,000 communities across the United States.” (en.wikipedia.org)
National Night Out is now designated to be observed on the 1st Tuesday of August each year. How many of you observed it this year? Does the idea of turning off the television, shutting down the tablet and/or completely turning off your smartphone seem terrifying?
I am ‘of an age’ that I remember when only the comic character Dick Tracey had a communication device on his wrist. I have no memory at all of ever seeing my parents making a long-distance telephone call or hearing either of their mentioning doing so. As other-worldly as it may sound, we wrote letters, we talked to friends and neighbors.
Maybe most importantly, we had a family of faith. We never thought of asking whether or not we were going to church on Sunday. That’s just what we and everyone we knew did. Except, of course, for our Jewish friends who went to synagogue on Saturday. People today brag of having thousands of ‘friends,’ none of whom they have ever actually met in person. We knew our friends and our family, because they were the ones who did do the will of God. We never felt alone or isolated.
Stay safe, find your own family of faith, trust God,
Pastor Ray