M is for MOBILE

Life was so simple then. Mum was up before seven o'clock, making porridge for dad and getting things ready for us, dinner was planned and probably cooking by mid-morning for the midday sitting and tea was often a fairly straightforward affair of either ham salad, eggs, scrambled or boiled, or on many occasions, a variety of home made breads and jams. And we waited patiently for everything, for there was no instant world existing, even in the kitchen. The microwave was a long way from being a standard appliance in everybody's home, probably still on the drawing board or at least viewed with a certain degree of scepticism and lack of confidence in its safety and instant foods amounted to nothing more than Angel Delight and Nescafe. Dishes took time to wash in the sink, were dried by hand and washing clothes was an altogether more labour consuming task. Bread had to be sliced, the cooker needed coal refills to keep it hot, water took time to freeze into cubes in the small ice box at the top of the fridge and even the television took time to warm up.

How different things are today. Everything is so much more instant and immediately obtainable. The microwave has revolutionised the way many live their lives, saving 'valuable' time formerly used for preparing and cooking that has now given way to instant, ready meals and reduced cooking time so much from the traditional methods. And if we don't want to use it, every village and town has at least one fast food cafe and even our local village has five. If we're still not satisfied with what they offer, restaurants are all about and eating out, once a novelty, has become a regular event for many. I don't remember us as a family eating out together when we were young, apart from the odd trip to the seaside when we visited a local cafe or restaurant for tea. But it's not only in food that we have become an 'instant' people. Nobody wants to stand in a queue, we want to see sport as it happens, not wait for the highlights or read about it the next day and easy credit allows us to have today what we can't afford even tomorrow. And there are others who won't even take time to work at their marriages. We have become an impatient, more demanding people with no time to waste and very little time to talk. We have twenty four hour news channels, sports channels and music channels on our televisions, internet access to the rest of the world and broadband to make it even more instant than it used to be and we have mobiles that allow us to make contact with almost anyone and make us available to everybody all the time. Why nowadays we don't even have to wait for the sun to give us a good tan!

We use our mobiles for phoning, for texting, for taking photographs, for mp3s, for playing games, for listening to the radio, as personal organisers, as reminders, as alarm clocks, for surfing the internet and for watching television. How often have you seen someone alone in a cafe, on a bus or train, at an airport, in fact almost anywhere find solace and companionship by lifting their little digital, wireless friend, staring at its small coloured screen and pressing a few buttons in the hope that they convince the watching public that they are doing something important. My first mobile, not too many years ago, about six inches long and the thickness of a medium length novel. It could make and receive calls but without predictive text, sending messages was slow and, quite honestly, it was quicker to phone. The screen wasn't coloured and the only interesting thing about it was its original ringtone that my son created on the way to a school rugby match one day. It's the ringtone that I still use, five or six phones later because I'm the only person in the whole world who has it - how personal is that?

So with an instant world of coffee, ready meals, fast foods, broadband, mobiles, microwaves and tanned skin, what do we do with all the time that we've saved. Well we certainly don't spend more family time together or more time talking to each other and not many spend more time with God. We look for newer ways to save time and then we waste it. What does the Bible say? The writer of Ecclesiastes 3 says 'There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.' I always loved the old hymn mum used to sing at various missions. The first line of every verse is 'Take Time to be Holy' and in the second verse it is followed by the line, 'The world rushes on'. So maybe even with all our advances in technology and our instant lives, the world isn't all that different from nearly one hundred and fifty years ago when that lovely old song was penned.

There are certain places, even close to home where my mobile just will not work, where there is absolutely no signal. Access to God is never closed. IN an age when the kettle still takes as long to boil as it always did, Jesus still saves as He always has done. Take time to be Holy.