01 March, 2012


The Burgers and Bone Marrow of Connectivity

This week’s sermon gave out these statistics: Over the past 25 years there has been a 45% decline of people inviting others into their homes and a 33% decline in families eating dinner together.

My pastor emailed me these numbers, as numbers don’t stick to my mind as they do in the mind of my soul mate, My Beloved Hubby. Still he and I experienced that social loss in over three decades together. Of course we old ‘uns began our interactions in prehistory, before Macs conveyed emails in plastic pizza boxes, and phones wired voices over miles of cables.

While away on the mission field MBH and I waited for snails via boat, airplane, buses, and human feet to deliver paper mail to us.

BTW in Nepal folks aren't into private domain. Hindu neighbors hung nearby to  peer at our religious gatherings. Folks wandered to each others’ homes and shared tea or meals. I’ll never forget one meal MBH and I had at the home of an educated Nepali family, to thank me for teaching her girl English. On stainless steel plates we were offered cylindered gelatins of bone marrow. Cross-cultural bonding is too cool!

Back at university the mid-1980s we hosted traditional cookouts, birthday parties, and long evenings with fellow student families. Neighbors and church friends of all strata invited us over weekly. In the late eighties and less often throughout nineties folks began the love affair with personal computers. Less often, still we met with others over Bibles, simple table games, coffee and tea mugs, and full course meals.

This new millennium innovation has throttled social contact into fingertip taps on lit screens. Our eyes are barraged by punctuated emoticons and misspelled texts. We convey more personal thoughts to more people than ever before in history, yet sociologists note we are more isolated than ever.

So last night, our family defied that isolation.  We attended our church’s mid-week meal/ Lenten Service. On disposable plates the grilled burgers were so tasty and plentiful, the church’s neighbors called for a fire truck. No burnt offerings but a heady incense of beefy smoke!

We got a taste of what the early church knew-- the person-to-person connect in Jesus love and God's word. Don’t know it? Get to church and make it happen.

P.S. Read how MBH makes his tasty burgers.


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