Are You Connected?

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Colossians 3:16

Oops… sorry I wasn’t paying attention.  I just had to get a couple of texts sent and emails completed. – just got to stay connected.  You won’t believe this by I had a colleague who hated using email.  Send DJ  an email and you may or may not get answer.  Most likely, you won’t.  When he was one of my Associate Pastors this was the one thing that people complained about.   They believed that he was either disorganized, or disrespectful, or wasn’t a good communicator or didn’t care.  Now, I want you to know that I agreed that he should answer their email. Again and again, I told him, “There’s an easy way for you to save yourself a lot of grief – Answer your emails!”  Why did he hate email?  Well it wasn’t any of the things that people thought it was.  He isn’t lazy.  He wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. DJ just really prefers getting on the phone and calling you… or even better coming to see you to talk face to face. 

And you know what?  He’s right!  All these gadgets and all the social media we use – they are good for sharing information but not for connecting with people…. Not for developing significant relationships.  In fact I am coming to believe they are a huge obstacle to making real connections with people. I wonder how many reading or listening to this have found themselves sitting a table or in a room with family or friends but nobody is talking to each other.  Why? Because they are all on their cell phones or I-pads sending texts, answering emails or googling something.  I wonder how many of us here have ever tried to deal with a serious subject through email, only to have people misunderstand your intent and become angry.  How many of us have taken a couple of minutes to send email or a text, only have those few minutes become a half hour or even an hour wasted?    In this age of short tweets and text messages, have we lost the ability to have a deep conversation with someone?

That’s sad because one of the keys to a healthy spiritual life… one of the characteristics of a healthy congregation is to have growing, personal relationships and connections with each other in Christ.  One of the ways in which we stay connected to our Savior Jesus is through our relationships with each other. Yes we can each read our Bibles and pray on our own.  But its together as the church that we speak and hear from one another the word of God… its together that we come to the Lord’s table to be nourished by His body and blood in the bread and wine… its together that we love and care for one another, celebrate with one another – that is how God keeps us connected to Himself.  That’s why Paul urges us in Colossians 3, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”

Cell phones and I-pads and computers… email, text messages, and tweets are all wonderful gifts from God.  But they are no substitute for the care and love both given and received when people take the time to talk, to listen, to share together what’s happening in life and what’s going on in their hearts. I remember a father once telling me of watching TV one night with his son.  On the show they were watching a father who was upset because his son was so engrossed in a TV show he was watching that he wasn’t listening to his dad.  Finally the dad on the TV show said, “Turn that TV off and listen to me.”  The father who was sharing this with his son then told me, “You know I thought that was some really good advice.  So I did what the TV actor said. I got up, turned off the TV and started talking to my son.” Being connected is in many ways just that easy.  Put your phone down.  Turn off your I-pad. Take some time to go with a friend for coffee. Talk, visit, listen, get to know each other better… and in so doing get to know your savior better too.