PRAY!

My brother and I have downloaded Skype on our computers in SC and here in the UK.

(For the uninitiated, Skype—www.Skype.com—is a terrific piece of free software that enables those with broadband internet connections to “phone” one another anywhere in the world—for no charge! We speak into our computer mics and listen on its speakers.)

A week or so ago, Susan, my sister-in-law, “Skyped” me. The funny thing was, I could hear her loud and clear, but she couldn’t hear me. Unbeknownst to her, my nephew, John, who’d been tweaking the sound on their computer earlier, had apparently shut its speakers down. So I resorted to instant-messaging (IM—writing in real-time) my replies to Susan.

There she was in the US—reading my IMs and speaking her responses. Here I was in the UK—listening to her and writing my responses. Trying hard to maintain a semblance of normal “conversation,” struggling to keep up with the speed of a back-and-forth exchange, my jottings were necessarily cropped and somewhat cryptic.

It was, indeed, a strange way to communicate with another! And in the background, I could hear my father wondering what was going on—his daughter-in-law seemed be to carrying on a one-way conversation with her computer! From his perspective, this already strange exchange was even stranger! We didn’t continue very long.

She was reading a written message. She replied by speaking.

Was there someone truly there at the other end of the line? Was the other listening? What was he thinking? Feeling? Except for those somewhat enigmatic written lines from across the divide, there appeared to be no clue that the other actually was present in that "conversation." Was this really working? Or was it all a waste of time? One risks looking mighty foolish speaking to someone who may or may not be listening, if they are there, in the first place.

To another doubter, a long time ago, Jesus said, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

[And, yes, sir, sometimes those written messages are mighty cryptic and enigmatic. That’s why we need “hermeneutics”—the science of interpretation. But I’ll save that for another aBeLOG!]

Verily, there is nothing like conversing in the very presence of the other, tête-à-tête—a true dialogue.

We will. Soon. But until then …

[Be] always of good courage, … knowing that
while we are at home in the body
we are absent from the Lord—
for we walk by faith, not by sight—
we are of good courage, I say,
and prefer rather to be absent from the body
and to be at home with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5: 6–8

Let's keep reading His stuff. Let's keep speaking to Him. He is there. He is listening.