Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions. [1 John 3:18 (NLT)]
Several years ago, we were celebrating Valentine’s Day with a dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. A young couple was seated next to us and, from the way she kept flashing the shiny diamond on her left hand, it appeared they were newly engaged. I thought how sweet it was for us old married folks to sneak a peek into some young love on this traditional night of romance. Instead of holding hands, however, the couple held their phones. Instead of staring into each other’s eyes, they stared down at their phones. Instead of whispering sweet nothings, they texted, tweeted, Facebooked, or Linked in. They did look up long enough for the waiter to take their picture, which was instantly sent off to the cloud somewhere. The only time they touched was when they posed for the requisite selfies. The phones were lowered only when a glass or fork was raised. Unless they were texting one another (which is a distinct possibility), the few times I saw them speak was to share something on their phones.
“What happened to romance?” I wondered. What happened to conversation? What happened to touch, eye contact, or even laughter? When did it become more vital to share our thoughts with the world than with the person beside us? When did it become more important to memorialize an event digitally than to live the event while it is happening? When did it become more imperative to show the world our faces than to show our loved ones our hearts?
Part of me wanted to grab their phones away and warn them that love needs more than on-line posts and a relationship can’t be maintained with 280-character tweets. I’m just an old married lady, but even I know that love requires work and that Google, Alexa, and Siri don’t have all the answers. Love is far more than looking good for the rest of the world; love is being good with and for one another. Being loved and being able to love are gifts from God. Although I said nothing to them, I did pray for them. If I’d had their numbers, I might have texted Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 13 that have guided us in our marriage. Maybe then they would have noticed one another.
Recently, I watched a young family at another restaurant. Both mother and father had their noses in their phones the entire evening and their two children were busy with their individual tablets: one watching a movie and the other playing a game. The only time they looked away from their devices was to speak with the waitress. I couldn’t help but remember that twosome many Valentine’s Days ago. If they’re even still together, is this what their family meals are like?
Let us never mistake simply being there with being present. Love is far more than just the presence of our bodies—it’s our mental and emotional presence, as well! While our cell phones and tablets connect us with the world, that connection must never be at the expense of truly connecting, face to face, with one another! If we ever hope to truly connect, we first must disconnect.
We’re selling our northern home and, with limited space in Florida, I must winnow out our 52 years of accumulated possessions. “How can I give them away?” I wondered while looking at the beautiful hand-painted Bavarian dinner and dessert plates that belonged to my mother and her mother before that. My fondness for the plates, however, has less to do with their beauty than with their provenance.
When the boy we know as “the prodigal son” comes to his senses and returns home, Jesus never says he was repentant; He says the boy was hungry! Moreover, while he knows he’s not worthy to be treated as a son, the boy doesn’t ask to be taken on as a slave; he boldly plans on asking to be hired as a paid servant. Those hearing the story probably were sure the boy was about to be properly punished but Jesus defied convention again. When the father sees his returning son, he runs to him with abandon. Again, cultural norms were flouted. Because running required a man to lift his garment and expose his bare legs, it was considered improper and undignified for a grown man to run. Perhaps Jesus’s listeners excused the man’s unseemly behavior because they thought he was in a rush to rebuke his boy. Expecting him to perform a kezazah ceremony (a shunning ritual in which he’d break a pot and yell that his son was cut off from his people forever), the father breaks all of society’s rules and embraces his boy.
Through His parables, Jesus related profound spiritual truths in stories that were easily understood and relevant to his listeners. Although Jesus’s original audience often didn’t like His message, they clearly knew what He was saying. Because of the vast cultural differences between our world and 1st century Palestine, I’m not sure we fully appreciate the impact His parables had on the people who first heard them.
I started Sunday morning with Psalm 139—a beautiful reminder that God was with us at our conception, is with us now, and will be with us at our end. “Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous,” read the psalm. Those words reminded me of Joey. Chinese by birth, born without hands, and abandoned by his mother, he was adopted by an American family. In spite of his many visible and hidden challenges, Joey was a cheerful little guy until entering junior high school, encountering bullies, and asking the inevitable questions that come with adolescence. In spite of being part of a loving family, he feels he failed the birth family who discarded him like a piece of trash and, rather than feeling wonderfully made, Joey asks why God made him the way He did.
While recovering from foot surgery, I had home visits from Mike, a physical therapist. He told me of a day, more than eighteen years ago, when he visited a new elderly patient. The obviously wealthy man lived alone in a beautifully appointed 6,000 square foot penthouse overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Mike remembers him as the most unpleasant, uncooperative, bitter and miserable person he’s ever met. After that visit, the therapist drove to a nearby town for another new patient visit. Although less than an hour’s drive northeast of the affluent man’s luxurious home, it was a world apart. Today, the population in the first town has a median age of 65.6, a median household income of over $90,000, and a poverty rate of less than 10%. Just thirty miles away, the second town has a median age of 26, with a median household income of less than $29,000, and 41.6% of its population live below the poverty level. Although the numbers were different eighteen years ago, the disparity would have been the same (or even worse).
Devotions of the Heart 