Learn, Believe and Speak

The weather has brought about the promotion of sitting on the porch for an hour or two in the evenings. With my wireless phone in hand, connected to my home Wi-Fi system, I was checking my email, was interrupted by a phone call, returned to my inbox, went online to check something out and even watched a short film clip about something unimportant, all within a matter of less than one half hour and never moving a muscle of exertion. I thought, what awesome power we hold in our hands now-a-days. We can travel the world and access any kind of information with our two thumbs and/or two index fingers. I did not live it, but I’ve seen the remnant of a time passed when the radio was ones only contact with world events and snail mail was the way of communicating long distances. The telephone changed a lot of things, but real time life involvement is a whole new twist on the lifestyle of this century. With little boy eyes, I remember seeing that huge upright Philco radio in my grandparent’s dining room. It had a big round dial with a dual pointer and numbers printed everywhere on it. The dial boasted of contacting such places as Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa, Central and South America, all of which I and my siblings never got the radio to do. Even with all the switches and knobs on the big four foot tall radio, it had outlived its usefulness with the advent of television following WWII. While still in high school, my brother acquired a tabletop war-time model which he placed on the chest of draws in our bedroom. He had the guts out of it testing all the old vacuum tubes and at the same time restoring the cabinet to look brand new. With 100 feet of thin steel wire stretched outside for a crude antenna from our bedroom window to an apple tree in the back yard, some chatter from Canada, the Erie Canal ship traffic and a few other places, with unknown languages, came through to spark the imagination and while away the time dreaming. President Kennedy challenged U.S. to go to the moon, which started people scratching their heads. I now hold in my hand more computing power than was on the vehicles that went to the moon and back. Today, zeros and ones, on and off switches, control our lives, because we chose to go to the moon. Today, I am literally overflowing with too much information in hand. Nevertheless, I learn what I can, sort the lies from the truth and help the technologically challenged, so in the end, we can all finish with a smile.

[Hebrews 1:1-2; 2 Corinthians 4:13-15; 2 Corinthians 1:18-27 & 2 Peter 1:12-21] A lot to read, right? Not really. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…”; “It is written, ‘I believed; therefore I have spoken.’ With the same spirit of faith we (the Apostles) also believe and therefore speak…”; “…as surely as God is faithful, our (the Apostles) message to you is not ‘YES’ and ‘NO’; …but in him it has always been ‘YES’. For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘YES’ in Christ.” Peter wrote, “So I will always remind you of these things, even though you know them and are firmly established in the truth you now have.” God’s speaks to us today through his Word. It is communication for life; abundant on earth and throughout eternity. There are many great scholarly translations of the Bible available to bring you to an understanding of God’s will for mankind. Old, new, big and small, learn what you can, pass it along to others, so in the end we can all finish with a smile; with God.