Like most politically correct cell phone users I turn my phone to vibrate or off when I go to church or the library.  The only problem with this practice is that I generally forget to take it out of my purse when I get home.  Then I miss phone calls and messages until I either go to bed and remember to fish it out of my purse or  I don’t remember it until the next morning and it sits in my purse overnight, usually running down the battery and turning itself off.

I’ve decided I like the good old-fashioned phones that just got put into one place and didn’t get moved.  They didn’t get lost and you pretty much always heard them ring.  Also they didn’t have batteries that died, they just plugged into the wall and worked unless the phone lines went down or the electricity went off.

Our relationship to God can be compared to our cellphones.  We can completely turn ourselves off from what He has to say to us and miss important communication from Him.  We do notice His absence when the phone is missing and we need to make a phone call.  Then when we are in trouble we search for Him until we find Him.  Sometimes we turn the sound back on, other times we just use it and then just leave it turned off.

We live about a third of a mile from the school where Brett works.  But we have such poor cell reception in this area we usually can’t carry on a phone conversation without having our call dropped.  There is one place in the house where I get the best reception and if I want a decent conversation that is where I sit.  If I get up to walk around, I will lose reception.  I once talked to my youngest son on the phone for about thirty minutes and we lost reception five or six times.  I need to have a good connection to God so that my communication with Him won’t be dropped due to lack of good reception on my part.

Our cell phones allow us to give our favorite people their own ring tones so we know who is calling without even looking.  I do that for the five important people in my life,  my husband, my sister and my three adult children….Aspen isn’t old enough to have a phone of her own yet.  If God literally had a cell number we could call Him at would I  feel close enough to Him to give Him His own ring tone?

I text people on a regular basis, but in our family nobody texts as much as my youngest son who is a junior in college this year.  His texts amount to several thousand per month!  I was shocked when I saw the number of texts he was making.  If I could literally text God, how many texts would be flying back and forth between us?  What would His texts say to me?

Unfortunately I can’t literally text God.  But, He certainly has plenty of texts for me.  All I have to do is pick up the Bible and read them.  He sends us texts about how much He loves us, how to make good choices, how to be happy.  They are all there just waiting to be read by us!  We don’t usually ignore our phone texts unless we want to avoid the person who sent it to us.  Let’s treat God with the same love He shows us and not only read the texts He sends us, but send some back to Him in appreciation for everything He has done for us.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow–not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.  No power in the sky above or in the earth below–indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38-39