Most Children And Many Adults Have A Mobile. ...

Most children and many adults have a mobile. It’s a valuable tool of communication, not only as a portable phone, but also in word messages known as ‘texting’. We were on holiday in Canada and found it so useful to keep in touch with our family by sending and receiving text messages as we travelled around.

I’m only a beginner at using my thumb in tapping out the message – I’m sure you young people are used to wearing out your thumbs in sending out messages to your friends – but it was amazing to receive a reply within minutes from our children back in the UK some 5,000 miles away!

This made me think of communicating with God our heavenly Father. Do you know what it’s called? It’s prayer! We read in the Gospels that Jesus often went to a quiet place to pray to His Father, but it wasn’t just one-way communication. No, God replied to Him by the Holy Spirit, to encourage and help Him. And He still does it today.

God is waiting to receive our text messages as we pray to Him. They don’t have to be long – my texting were only 25 words or so, often in the kind of shorthand used by texters – but God understands even the shortest, stumbling prayer, ‘Lord help me, Lord save me.’ And how does he reply? He does it in words – do you know how? Through what is written in the Bible.