The quote from Cool Hand Luke is a well known one. Can you imagine living with your family, but not speaking with them or communicating with them. Getting up in the morning, and going about your task without saying good morning. Leaving for work, without saying goodbye or having a discussion of what
your agenda is for the day. Not knowing when you will be home or what plans will there be for later in the day. Not looking ahead for the week or other upcoming events.
Would this be rude? Would this be a sign of other problems? Would it show a lack of love and absence of a true relationship that is dynamic? Yet,so many people do not communicate or even speak to each other and yet they attempt to live with each other. There is a lack of basic communication among so many families. So many of our problems have this problem.
In this fast paced world, the missed communication or real expression of sharing life is too often a note. This is not all bad but it is not the ideal. The common courtesy of spending a few minutes with each other in the morning is replaced by a text message or email. We sadly use the notes only to communicate the essentials and not our true feelings. We only say things like, "I will be late," or "I am going to the store" or what ever needs to be said to insure the function of the family. There is so little or no expansion of ideas, feelings, or expression of what is truly being experienced. Have our lives become so busy that this is all we have? Must we must depend on electrical gadgets to express ourselves. Do not get me wrong I do believe in using email, text, and voice mail as they do make our lives much easier, but the reduction of communication to the bare basics of functionality is sadly what is happening and we are losing the true ability to express ourselves.
What is even sadder is the reality that many treat God this way. We spend so little time with Him. We even communicate electronically as we get our prayer request out and read over them on the internet.
If your wife sends you an email or text or leaves a voice mail would you ignore it? Not if you want life to go on as normal. (What ever that is or means for you.) If your child leaves you a note on the counter to do something would you act like it is not there. Would there be no consideration for your child's request? Brittany often does her laundry at night and leaves me a note to put laundry in the dryer. I would be wrong to ignore this request especially when it takes so little on my part.
Think about what we are doing now as the family of God. We often ignore the note from God. We have the note (His Word the Bible) but we ignore even to read it to find out what he has that is important today that He wants to communicate to us. We fail to talk to Him. We get up in the morning and ignore Him. We have the note from Him so readily available. I have two new testaments I usually carry one of them. I have several computer programs with His Word on both of my computers. I have the internet bibles that I can access from anyone's computer. I even have the ESV on my phone, so I have it with me all the time. I have mulitple versons on my desk and in my study.....but how many times a day do I read? Too few, too often, is my honest answer.
Then for me to speak to God is another matter. I kind of address the main issure as needed to keep the appearance of godliness in my life. Meal time, church meetings, even at night in our family prayer time I will pray outloud and seem to have a great thing going. But too often, the time needed when I speak to the father and sit and listen to Him speak to me through His word is lacking in my life. In other words I am fucntioning but not realling communicating for the realtioship to be dynamic.
Reading the Word of God should be one of the highest priorities in every believers life. Putting myself in the place of Brittany or minute I should be leaving a note for the Father by way of prayer. Think about this for a minute. Brittany leaves me a note and goes to bed with confidence that when I read the note there will be little doubt that I will help her out with the request. She does not worry or make more out of it than is necessary but just leaves the communication with me. How much more will our father do. If we communicate with Him will he ignore us? Of course not. What if she leaves notes that are silly or outlandish demanding things that are inappropriate? What if Brittany left me a note asking I give her $ 10,000.00 this morning or asking me to make a bad situation go away and fix it before breakfast. While I might want to do these things, and possibley could do some of them, should I? Would that be good for Brittany? Of course the answer is no. But what if instead of fixing her problem or ansering her oultlansish request, left her a note about opportunities or ideas that if she would practice and put in place in her life would be the answer she needed. But what if she then ignored my note? If she did not read my note what should I do?
God has left us love notes and told us how life should be lived. We ignore his notes and leave (by way of prayers) a list of demads as to what we think we need most. How selfishly we focus on self. Are you reading His communications to you and then by way of meditations thinking about your situations problems and needs in light of what He is speaking to you through the Word.
Is it any wonder our world is so full of messy situations and problems that are difficult. Is it any wonder we see so little of the lack of the power of God revealed.
Lets resolve to communicate with God as a family should. Read His notes more . Leave him a note with reasonable expectaions and then believe Him that it will be taken care of in a timely manner. We should do this knowing He is likely going to give you a responsibility to know his thoughts (His Word) and apply His teaching to the situation or problem.
I love God and yet I am terrible to not communicate properly. My prayer is this makes you think about your own communication with Him and that you and I can do a better job on communications.
