Are you as irritated as I when the phone rings and you get up out of your easy chair, rush across the room, only to listen to a recorded message telling you that you have been called in response to an inquiry you made? You know you never made any such inquiry.
In the mornings when I record the day’s devotional on our 800 line* I sometimes discover on the messages left behind that one of those machines called our machine. In order for it to send its message it first has to listen to ours. Only then can it leave its message. I am amused at the idea of the machines talking to each other. I wish their machine would as a result of listening to our machine repent. If so then it would stop calling you and me. A hundred years from now, if Jesus has not yet returned, we can send our personal robot to church in our self driving cars to listen to the robot the pastor sent. Upon returning home our robot can deliver to us a word for word recitation of the morning sermon.
Sometimes I get the feeling that even though we are in church in the flesh that the same routines and the same prayers are not much different from robots. If we have a friend to friend relationship with God I doubt if saying the same thing over and over really works. Imagine an evening out with friends where you said the very same things with the very same words that you said the week before and the week before that. Jesus did say to us in John 15, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on August 14, 2015
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org