As many of you must have noticed, last week’s devotional was a
tad late. Our house was without internet
service for most of the week due to a defective router, and it had been
receiving poor quality internet service for weeks prior to that. I had actually purchased a new wireless
printer, thinking my old one was bad, and taken my laptop to the Mac shop,
thinking the network card was bad. But
it was the router, the little black box that brings the internet signal into
our home and shares it wirelessly throughout the house.
As I said, we had been without a reliable internet signal for
some time, but it finally stopped working on Tuesday. And the woman at Tech Support promised that a
new router would be shipped out overnight.
She lied. I waited at home all
day Wednesday, missing two classes, and no router came. It didn’t actually arrive until late Thursday
afternoon. And then, because the
internet provider had changed my password, I couldn’t actually get my service
up and running without another lengthy phone call. And when I finally got it it running, the
download speed was 1/10th of what it should have been. So I left the house and waited for proper
speed to be restored instead of another lengthy, and possibly testy, call to
Tech Support.
Last Sunday I filled in for the pastor at our local church, and I
talked about how hard it was to maintain the attitude of a Godly woman when I
was so frustrated by poor customer service, the fourth router in 15 months, and
the inability to get my work done. None
of these were adequate excuses; I was just plain crabby! But I realized that I do so much of my sermon
prep online because I still don’t have all my books unpacked, and I needed
access to the web. I was also quite late
getting my devotional to you, and I wasn’t able to keep in touch with my
friends and family as is my wont.
And that got me thinking about how we need to keep in touch with
God. If we don’t keep that line of
communication open, that can probably drive us a bit crazy, too. We need to read God’s word, pray, and spend
time with fellow Christians. We need to
lift up and encourage one another. And
we need to make sure we don’t spend too much time plugged into our electronic
devices, as convenient as they are.
Thank you, Dear Lord, for
the gift of the Internet. We can connect
with friends, family and colleagues in ways we couldn’t have imagined even
thirty years ago. We can reach out in
ministry in new and exciting ways. We
can send your word around the world, and translate it into the languages we
need to reach to reach new people. We
can reach the blind and the deaf with special technology, and reach people who
can’t leave their homes. We thank you
for these gifts. Remind us to use them
wisely, and to keep you always at the forefront of our minds and hearts. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Blessed are those who listen to
me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway.
Proverbs 8:34
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