On Thursday the O2 moblie network went down. Apparently. I'm not on O2 so I didn't notice a difference. But those millions who are on it seemingly spent the day in agonising frustration unable to use their phones.
Do you remember the days when a phone sat on the table in your hallway plugged into the wall?. Most people had one in their house and sometimes there was one in a red box at the end of your street. People felt very little need to phone each other except to make arrangements for important things or on special occasions. A phone was for making calls. Life was simple back then.😉
I quite often think that when things happen in the natural world God is encouraging us to pay attention - and this week we saw what happens when the supply of O2 is cut off. O2 is the chemical symbol for oxygen. Oxygen is what we need to keep us alive. If oxygen is cut off we don't just suffer a day of frustration and an inability to communicate - we die.
Im reminded of a song ' This is the air I breathe - Your very presence living in me, Your very Word spoken to me '
Are you following my rather convoluted train of thought? It's hard to get this stuff down on paper sometimes in any way which makes sense . But here's the thing...... the presence and the word of God are life to us. Like the air we breathe we are almost 100% unaware of His presence and His Word in us, around us, moving through us, directing and protecting us. Like a mobile phone signal His power and constant open channels of communication are just available all the time whether we choose to use them or not. UNTIL.......
Until one day we wake up and feel that His presence and His word are absent. We can't sense or hear Him any more. He is distant and silent and we don't know where He has gone. Sadly I suspect that people get a lot more distressed by one day of no phone signal than they do by one day of no God signal. Im not sure if most of us would actually notice if God stopped broadcasting...... but when our phone signal goes down......!! Most people apparently check their phones every 12 minutes - as though they cant live without that sense of connection and the constant input of other people into their day. I wonder what life would look like if most people checked in with Jesus every 12 minutes to find out what He was thinking about any given subject at any given time. I remember way back in the day John Paul Jackson saying that he had an alarm set on his watch to buzz every hour to remind him to think about Jesus. He wanted to make being Jesus-focused a priority every waking hour of every day. We find it so very easy to remember to look at our phones multiple times an hour so why so hard to remember to check in with Jesus multiple times an hour? Or pray for that friend we promised we would pray for?
Sigh. I am of course preaching to myself here. I am rubbish at being filled with all the fullness of God. I find I can go for days without really intentionally focusing on Him and when I do I know I limit Him to my timeframe, my expectations, my agenda. At least I am not addicted to my phone. I can go most of the day without even looking at it and if it gets left on the kitchen table in the morning by mistake it can be lunchtime before I've even realised I dont have it with me 😊 But I'm ridiculously distracted by other things and by nothing at all. If God is really the air I breathe then I am well and truly pushing up daisies right now. I am so thankful that He never gives up on me. And that He knows more than Google, is more consistent than O2 and loves me more than Vodafone does, 😁
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