April 4

It was one of those moments of absolute technical wizardry. I was watching TV upstairs; the kids had on their TV downstairs. The upstairs computer was downloading a file from the internet. Lois was surfing the web and getting E-mails on the computer downstairs. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with an amazing thought: all of this stuff, the video signal, the individual letters in each word of the email, the mysterious data that is involved with software of any kind, all of the information pouring onto the screen was racing through one single cable. It’s that cable that plugs into the back of a TV, some of your fancier radios, and into many computers nowadays.
Now, a TV signal sends about 250 lines of information 30 times a second. Those 250 lines correspond to one still picture on the screen. The signal includes the information to make the hero’s teeth white, the villain’s costume black, and to colour in all the rest of the scene. It also carries sound-effects, music and voices, as well as signals telling the TV what to do. That’s a lot of information, but there’s more. Every channel you pay for, and the ones you don’t, all go down the surface of that thin wire at the same time! There’s still more. All your email, in addition to all other email sent out by the cable provider, races down that same thin wire along with countless TV channels. And there’s still more! Everyone surfing the web courtesy of the same cable provider shares the cable pathway carrying all the other signals.
The numbers are staggering, but not impossible, since our appliances are very picky customers. They deal with this vast sea of information with tuners and addresses. Tuners react only to the station they are set to; all other information is invisible to them. Computers use sophisticated addressing schemes that are equally discriminate. They pick up only the information that is addressed to them, and have no contact with anything else.
Imagine then, God, at the other end of the spectrum: one receiver hearing and decoding all the information that comes to it. God knows us all. Not just in this moment, but everything that’s gone before, and everything that is yet to come. God knows it. God hears us, all six-billion, all at once. Not as a confused jumble of noise, put as plainly and clearly as the best high-definition TV screen or high quality LCD monitor. And God doesn’t listen impassively. Our prayers sink in and move God.  They are felt and dealt with, not at a corporate level, but according to each of our needs for that moment.
God deals with us as if we had the only heart-directed cable connection to Him. And it all happens as easily as we change channels, or change our minds. God does not tune us out, even if we are hurtful or offensive. God does not ignore us even if we try to hide. God does not lose interest because we don’t get in touch often enough. And God does it not as a cold, soulless machine, but as a loving parent, moved and touched by all of His children, caring for us even when we have no clue as to what’s really going on. No matter how tuned out we may be, God is always tuned into us, listening for even the slightest chance to be involved in our lives, even if it’s just to remind us of how much we are loved. At least that’s the way I see it.