Beyond Pen Pals

My husband and I are on a 2 week vacation in Alaska. For some reason, I started thinking about pen pals, maybe because I’m in a place that seems so far away. Do you remember pen pals? Think how far we’ve come in communication methods since then!

I thought about communication today as we were driving through some beautiful Northern country around Fairbanks. The woods, full of birches and evergreens, come right up to the roads and rivers. Every so often there is a straight, narrow swath of land cleared of trees – for the telephone poles. What a huge undertaking it was to put up those lines throughout the country – and the world. Now there are so many more ways to connect besides the telephone – and many of those methods use waves floating through the air instead of physical lines.

How do you connect with church family members? With the missionaries you support? With other partners in faith? We have skyped with our missionaries several times. They also blog so we can keep up with their doings. We receive emails with news as well. With our local members we use a Google group for our prayer chain, our web page and Facebook. We podcast our sermons. Many churches use Twitter, stream their services, post online videos, and more.

It makes me wonder, what's next? Who could have imagined what we use now for communication? Well, I guess those who created it imagined it! What are the creators of new technologies coming up with now that most of us cannot even fathom? Praise God for the wondrous ways we in our church families can connect and show our love for each other and him.