Recently I downloaded a kind of fun app called “Slowly”. Slowly’s claim to fame is that it is an international pen pal app. Having been raised overseas and having traveled to a few different places in the world, the idea of communicating with someone from another country was interesting to me. The other thing that was interesting to me was Slowly’s policy against “instantaneous communication”. Even though Slowly could send my messages to far away places like Latvia and Fiji immediately – instead, it acts like it is sending a semi-real letter. The further countries may take up to 3 days to receive my message.

This letter writing made me think about how something like 2/3rds of the New Testament was composed as letters. Men of God inspired by the Holy Spirit were sitting down to write far away places like Ephesus, Corinth, and Pergamum. They would somehow take these letters to a messenger type service that would promise to bring them to the appropriate place. In 10-14 days, Paul would be wondering if the people at Thessalonica got his message – but he couldn’t know. Nor could he know how it landed with them. When he sent that first spicy letter to Corinth, we do not know how long it was until he heard back how those words had landed with them. I’m sure there was waiting, and wondering, and praying.

Slowly messages and snail mail missives are the exception, and not the rule. The moment I hit “save” on this article – zoom – it is available all over the world in a matter of nanoseconds. There is a lot to give thanks for there. I definitely appreciate our instantaneous communication possibilities. It saves lives, it makes life easier most of the time, but I do wonder if it somehow takes away from the relationships we might have with the people we’re communicating with. In other words, if I can just email them, do I really need to pray for them? If I can check out their social feed – do I need to inquire how they are doing? 

Christianity is a religion that believes that God made people most important. According to our faith, people are more important than money, than conquest, than ease, than convenience….people are more important than everything, except for God. So maybe today we could pray for someone or reach out to see how they are doing (even instantaneously with a text or email), and remember that we worship a God who made our fellow human being, and who made us, and made us most important in His sight – so important that He sent His Son to us.