We’re always calling God.
Where are you God?
Why don’t you pick up?
The phone rings and rings,
echoing in that heavenly chamber.
We check the number,
this has got to be right.
Finally God’s answering machine clicks in.
We hear God’s voice,
“Why are you calling me?
I’m standing right beside you.”
Thank you God for giving us
minds that think and ideas that soar.
Thank you for giving us language and writing,
and prosperity that enables education for many.
Thank you for brilliant inventors who created
technological marvels; radio waves radiating,
microscopes magnifying, computers computing.
Thank you that we have even created artificial intelligence
and robots that do work for us and with us.
Today we pray for good things gone bad;
for social media tools that isolate us from our neighbour,
for algorithms that misinform us about our world,
Words dance into space
bouncing off satellites:
my voice rocketing
through the stratosphere here
and ricocheting into your ear there.
Your thumbs type text
and even as you press send,
I receive your message.
Across the miles
the image of your presence
hovers on my screen,
our voices intertwining on this internet.
My grandparents were as proud
Creator God,
thank you that we are a connected people.
We are connected in ways
other generations could never have imagined;
connected with wires and radio waves,
fibre optic cables and the internet,
connected with roads and train tracks
and airline flight plans.
We are more connected with each other
than at any other time in history and yet…
something isn’t right.
Words and images zoom through air,
ricochet in cyberspace,
bounce off tiny screens and speakers
to eyes and ears and brains;
yours, mine.
in fractions of seconds gigabytes
scatter and dart at our whim and call.
Human ingenuity sparkles;
we have taken the shout, the messenger,
the smoke signal, the letter, the telegram
and raised it to the nth degree.
We are the world connected.
And so today we stand with our tools in our hands:
you in your room in Israel,…
Great webs of connection circle the earth.
They burrow in cables under the ocean,
they permeate the air with radio waves,
they bounce off satellites in space.
The world is teeming with nets of interaction,
a global feast of signals, prepared and digested
each and every minute of every day.
Byte by byte, God scans the fragmented world.
Comfortable with every platform,
fluent in every operating system,
God follows every thread to its ultimate conclusion.
God knows where you log on,
We’re always calling God.
Where are you God?
Why don’t you pick up?
The phone rings and rings,
echoing in that heavenly chamber.
We check the number,
this has got to be right.
Finally God’s answering machine clicks in.
We hear God’s voice,
“Why are you calling me?
I’m standing right beside you.”
In our remote control world
advertisements compete to control
body, mind, thoughts.
Pop-ups telling us how
to look, walk, eat, buy.
Telling us who to be, what to see
who to fear, what to wear
how to think, where to shop.
Stop. Why?
Your spirit, a divine virus checker
I am a Mennonite pastor currently teaching theology at Conrad Grebel University College in Waterloo, Ontario. I’ve served congregations in Ontario and most recently, Alberta.
I love to write and to lead worship! If you are finding my writing helpful, I would love to hear from you! Feel free to use or adapt the material here, it is all written by me. If printing material, please credit “Copyright Carol Penner www.leadinginworship.com” (and say whether you modified it). If publishing, please contact me for permission. Contact me at carol@leadinginworship.com
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