Electronic Reality

The fast suggestion for tomorrow is I think in some ways the most interesting:
E-mail fast-try to go the whole day without checking personal E-mail.

If you’re ambitious, you can add facebook to this fast if you’d like.

Our society has become very conditioned for rapid communication and constant contact. Think about how the use of mail, or the phone have changed from even 15 years ago, let alone what it would have been like in times of more uncertain communication only a few hundred years ago, not to mention the Apostle Paul communicating by hand delivered letter.

I think there are some really good things about this transformation in communication. I keep better track of my family, my friends from around the country, and the people at Saint Louis Mennonite Fellowship because of the rapid pace of conversation.

But there is also a sense of obligation that gets created, as we face the need to keep in touch with a wider range of people, rather than just ‘catching up’ when we run in to people on a more sporadic basis, and there is the ever present danger of relationships that are more wide than deep.

It is important to move in our world with intentionality and all deliberate haste. Taking a break from E-mail, Facebook, and other social medium allows us to remember what it is like to be without some of our technology, and to practice with purpose our modern lifestyle (says the man writing the blog).

Pay attention, so that you notice who you are and how you change.