Hope at the gas pump (and I don’t mean gas prices!)
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
Technology is everywhere these days. We don’t leave home without it.
Surely you’ve seen couples together at restaurants, busy with their own cell phones or laptops. And at a musical in San Francisco, I saw friends sitting side-by-side in their theater seats, gaming on their own Nintendo DS’s.
Are we really present with anyone, anymore?
Even if we make personal choices to leave technology at home, it’s blasted at us from all sides. I was most disappointed when the gas station I frequent chose to install TV screens at every pump. Talk about a captive audience!
Technology’s inexorable encroachment on every part of our lives seems inevitable. And yet…
One day I went to the gas station, and the TVs were gone. No one seemed to miss them.
And in my heart there is still much rejoicing every time I go to fill up my car and see the absence of gas pump TV.
If people can find it in themselves to turn back the tide of technology, even in a small way, perhaps people will find it in themselves to repent of greater things.
As the song from Godspell says, “Turn back, O man, forswear thy foolish ways.”
What gives you hope?