The year was 1995. Cell phones were just coming into existence, but were bulky and expensive. There was a new thing called the World Wide Web that had my music history professor at Ole Miss excited because he didn’t have to go to other universities to do his research. He could access materials on the web. Email was done over dial-up connections on phone lines. Speaking of phone lines, long-distance calls were expensive; that was a problem because the young lady I had just met, Sue Ellen, didn’t live in the same town. (In fact, we never lived in the same town until we married.) Though not convenient, it was more affordable for us to do most of our communicating over email.
Sue Ellen has always been an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person. Me? I’m a night owl. So, in the mornings, she would log in to email in the library at Mississippi College, where she was completing her master’s degree, and would send me a message. At night, I would log in to the server at Ole Miss, read her email, and respond. I looked forward to the end of each day, knowing that there would be a message from the one I love waiting for me. The weekends were really the only time we could afford to talk to each other on the phone—“night and weekend” rates, you may recall.
Fast forward to today. We just celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary, and a lot has changed since we met in 1995. A significant change has been how often we talk to each other and how easy it is to get in touch with one another. The comedian, Sinbad, once asked incredulously during a Q&A time at the end of one of his concerts, “What do you mean he doesn’t talk to you? You talked before he left the house. You called him on the way to work. You called him at work. You called him at lunch. You called him that afternoon. You called him on the way home from work. What do you mean he never talks to you?”
One of the church reformers in the 16th century suggested that we should pray 9 times a day at a minimum: in the morning when we wake up and in the evening before going to bed; before and after every meal; and when we begin work.
How often do you talk to the Father? Before every meal? Once a day? Every other day? Once a week? How would our marriages be if we talked to our spouse as briefly and infrequently as we speak to God? The Bible says that we are to pray without ceasing.
Larnelle Harris has a song entitled “I Miss My Time with You” in which he imagines Jesus asking, “You’re too busy trying to serve Me, but how can you serve Me when your spirit’s empty.”
There’s an old hymn that says, “Take time to be holy, speak oft with the Lord.”
How’s your relationship with Jesus? The time you spend with Him and how often you speak to Him is a sure indicator. May we all work to better our relationship with Him. It begins with spending time in His word and talking to Him.
— Mickey Ballard