Cell Phones

I remember the day when my brother got his first cell phone. It was an in the car cell phone, all wrapped up in a leather bag/case. It had a wire the ran from the bag to a cool looking antenna that was on the back of his SUV. It was such a cool gadget . . . and so much smaller than the big brick looking cell phones that other people had.

I remember the first cell phone I had. I thought I was so cool. It was small compared to my brother's bag phone, though I still had to pull the antenna up for better reception. It was too big to fit in my pocket, so it had a lovely leather sleeve that fit over it with a belt holder. I could make and receive calls. To check the voicemail, you had to call another number. It did nothing else. Well, I probably could have sent a text at that point, but it would have cost lots of money. I was so high tech.

I currently have an iphone. It is miniscule compared to my brother's bag phone. It has no needs for external antennas or a constant power source other than to charge the battery every other day. And it fits nicely in my pocket. Furthermore, I can do so much more than just make phone calls. I can surf the web, video chat with my friends in other parts of the world, play any assortment of games made specifically for it, control my desktop computer in my office from anywhere I have phone signal, and use it as a compass if I were ever lost in the middle of nowhere--all without roaming charges! What a difference two decades of technological advances can make.

Though, with advances come with a price. Before the age of cell phones, the only way people could reach you was with a land line. If you weren't there, they might be lucky enough to leave you a message on your answering machine, if you even had one. Otherwise, they were forced to call you back at a later time, write a letter, or travel to you to speak to you face to face. Now, I can't get away from anyone. In all honesty, my phone is closer to me than almost everything else. It is always within arm's reach. Which means, anyone and everyone I am connected to is really only an arm's length away, in addition to all the information and stuff I choose to encounter through my phone. I can't get away from anything, unless I put my phone in time out.

More than that, before the age of cell phones, the only way I could really annoy someone with the phone was to repeatedly call them so they had to get up to answer the phone that was in another other room or physically trip (or choke) them with the coiled 30 foot handset cord. Now, I have a plethora of annoyance possibilities from talking loudly in line at the supermarket or texting in the middle of a movie to forgetting to shut off my ringer during church.

I wonder how Jesus would have used a cell phone, had he had that technology available to him. I'm sure he would use it in all the positive ways--sending emails of encouragement and communicating to others about the Kingdom of God. Would he have a twitter feed that stated, "just fed 5000!" or "healed a blind guy today!" Probably not. He certainly would have remembered to silence his phone at the temple and the synagogue.

I want to be honest here. I'll be the first one to admit that I need to gage the amount of noise that I let technology create in my life. I probably do need to put my phone (and for that matter, the internet) in a time out and make some silent space to be still and listen without interuption. It will probably be good for me . . . and the world won't fall apart while I'm gone.

How about you?