When I was a boy we had a tiny 13″ television set and an old antenna that brought in one channel clearly. I didn’t have to worry about the remote because I only had one choice of what to watch. Still, I would be in my chair when my cartoons came on. The one I liked the best was the Jetsons. It was a cartoon set in a future that was full of fantastic machines that could do anything. I always smiled when I watched it and dreamed of a day when I would have machines like this to do all my work so I could just sit back and relax.
Now that it is 50 years in the future my life is full of machines like these, but if anything I now seem to have more to do than ever. Just today I had to spend most of the morning downloading a new version of my word processing program so I can even write this now. When I first started out I wrote my stories on lined notebook paper and it took half the time. Last week I spent most of another morning trying to get my 4-month-old new coffee maker to work right. For some reason it would only make 4 cups at a time no matter how much I reset the program in it. Finally in frustration I went out and bought the simplest coffee maker they make. The one that only has an on/off button and nothing else. I am also still waiting for that paperless society they keep talking about. I seem instead to be drowning in a sea of new forms, new rules, and new paperwork all brought about by over relying on computers.
Now don’t get me wrong. Computers and machines have done a lot to help all of us. I just want us to be able to use them without them using us. We seem to be caught in an underbrush of busyness by spending all of our time on these devices. We are losing sight of the straight path we should be on. We are losing sight of what we are here for.
God loves us and God put us here to love each other. Anything that doesn’t help us to do this isn’t worth our time. Take charge of your time then. Take charge of your life. Spend your days giving love, doing good, helping others, sharing kindness, and spreading joy. Use your machines to help you do this. Stop looking for more and more to do and spend your precious moments finding more and more to love. Then every second of your time will be well spent. Then every moment of your life will be Heaven sent.
