unlimited text message plan. aka. I Thessalonians 5:17

I joined Twitter today, I did it solely based on the fact that Kurt joined and sent me an e-mail inviting me to do the same. And, I guess what I mean by that is before he could probably start...tweeting...he had to check off a bunch of names on the list of his contacts it somehow got into in order to well...proliferate the tweeting, shall we say?

Anyways, I joined because he has signed up for both gchat and skype for me, so I figured this was the least I could do.
Umm.
I might also like to see precisely how many forms of communication he and I can cover. When my phone bill took a turn for the worst, by utilizing his iPhone we were still able to Skype, e-mail, Facebook, and G-chat. I on my laptop, he on his phone. You know...the phone he can use to make phone calls...or avoid doing so by utilizing the the half dozen other ways it's capable of communicating.

heh.

So.
I can text, e-mail, message, tweet, IM, post...I'm forgetting others, I'm sure.
We have so many options to tell people what we're doing and how we're doing...I'm not even sure most of us really live THAT interesting of a life??
But, texting especially.
We all prefer it.
It's less vulnerable, it's direct, and it lets you be a little more open then you'd probably be in conversation.

So.
I thought about this communication business and then began to wonder this...


What if we could text God?


Seriously.
Think about it.

Face it, we all struggle with prayer. I don't need to tell you why, we all know why, so instead just think about it...
What if we could just text God?
A one liner to say hi, a prayer request, a question, a general update on life and what I saw just now as I got on the subway. "Hey just thinking of you, love you" "are you free tonight?" "I feel so lonely" "I'm scared, will you pray with me when you have a minute?" "Do you think I should take the job?"

Tell you what, if we could text God...He'd text back.
He'd say "I was just thinking of you too!" "I've definitely got time for you tonight!" "if you were alone, you couldn't have text messaged me! I'm not far from where you are, I'll come meet you and let's catch up" "sure, I'll call you and we can pray" "let's talk about that job, I've got an idea"

And so on.
And so forth.

I think that in a world that would rather text than call, it's no surprise that prayer is daunting. Maybe we're just a little out of practice. But (and maybe this is a little theologically risky...but maybe it's also a little culutrally relevant) I think we should try not to always treat prayer like a conversation, at least not all of it. (I mean, we have to talk to our friends SOMEtimes)...but in the meantime, we keep in touch with the little things, because we want them to know, because we know they care.
Well why should that be any different with God? A lot of the times when I think of something to tell someone, I'll do just that. I'll pull out my phone and send them a message.
My phone shoots it into space to land in someone else's inbox.
But what if I shot a little higher? What if I just directed the thought towards God instead? Not sitting down to pray, not closing my eyes, or taking the hand of the person next to me (quite frankly I use far too much public transportation for that to work out well).

Just...tell (text?) Him.


Suddently, prayer is less overwhelming. Suddenly He seems much more accessible, doesn't He? It hit me when I thought about actually texting God...but the fact is, He IS that accessible.
He is that close and He cares more than the people we love the most.

I recently had to switch my text message plan to "unlimited"...I guess you could say it's my "pray without ceasing" plan. :)


But seriously...what if we could text God?