Cellphone service – and therefore communication as we have come to know it – has been sketchy recently for me and my neighbors who share the same carrier.
Seldom does a text go through. Calls on the cellphone are nonexistent as well. Thank goodness we still have a landline.
I finally noticed the “No Service” message in the top left corner of my screen but, frankly, I really didn’t know how to deal with it.
After what seemed like hours of researching the situation online (fortunately, our Wi-Fi is still working) and following several of the suggestions that I found (turning off my phone and restarting, switching from Airplane Mode and back, pondering whether I should reset my network settings), I was at wit’s end. So, ultimately, I did what I should have done in the first place: I called the local AT&T store.
Even the workers there gave me different answers on what I should do. But at long last the truth came out.
The cell phone tower that serves this area is being worked on. Hopefully by the time you’re reading this column, I will have rejoined the human race in regard to 21st-century communication.
One of my friends’ comments about the situation got me to thinking, though. She said, “This would be a great article about the changes of communication, but prayer has never changed. You’ll never have a failed connection.”
I love that analogy, and now, every time I have a dropped cellphone call, or when the internet goes out, or when cable takes a vacation, I’m going to think of the one area of communication that will always remain the same and will always remain open – our connection with our Heavenly Father.
He’s always been a communicator in regard to his creation. We’re created in God’s image, and he desires a personal relationship with us – one in which, yes, communication is involved.
Think of the Garden. Even when Adam and Eve sinned, it was God who called out to them, not the other way around. The Old Testament is packed full of prophets and prophesies through which God communicated with humankind. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk and numerous others.
Sometimes he is especially busy. In the New Testament, think of Mary and the angel she saw before Jesus’ birth. Her husband, Joseph, and his dream. The shepherds in the fields and the angels delivering the message of Jesus’ birth. The Magi and their dream about the Christ child.
God communicates with us. The creator of the universe – the omnipotent, sovereign, all-surpassing being we have the privilege of calling Father – is actually incredibly personal. He’s ever-present, always aware, and lovingly involved in every speck, every smidgeon of who we are.
He listens to us when we speak, and I John 5:14 assures us that those who are in his fold have confidence in approaching him, “that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” We need to reach out to him; he desires our communication with him.
While today he may not appear in a burning bush or through a bright light that knocks us to our knees on the road to Damascus, he continues to speak to us through his word, the Bible, and to act providentially in our lives. We need to speak to him, too. We do that, of course, through prayer.
As the inoperative cellphone scenario implies, we need to have that two-way communication system up and running. And thus I’m reminded of another more old-fashioned type of communication that one songwriter spoke of in regard to God:
“Everybody has a radio receiver
All you got to do is listen for the call
Turn your radio on, turn your radio on
If you listen in you will be a believer
Leanin’ on the truths that’ll never fall
Get in touch with God, turn the radio on.”
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Sallie Rose Hollis lives in Ruston and retired from Louisiana Tech as an associate professor of journalism and the assistant director of the News Bureau. She can be contacted at sallierose@mail.com.
