Weekly Update – 15th September

“Hello! This is God!”
Did you know there are estimated to be more mobile phones than there are people in the world! The World Economic Forum says that at the time they looked into this in 2022, there were more than 8.58 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide compared to an estimated population of 7.95 billion! That’s an awful lot of phones and when we think about it today, how on earth did we manage without them? I know I did for 25 years before I got my first one. Gone are the days when all they did was send simple texts, make calls and receive calls, playing a funny tune such as the William Tell Overture – I had that ring tone! Today, a typical smart phone has more than 100,000 times more processing power than the computer that guided and landed the Apollo missions to the moon! That’s in our pockets and handbags! A mind-boggling amount of connectivity.
So, thinking about being connected, made me think about  calling on God and how sometimes he calls on us too!
Going back to the Bible, in Samuel, last month we read about Hannah in 1 Samuel 1, as she fervently prayed for a son and how God answered her giving her Samuel. Let’s go further and see what happened when she gave her little boy back to God to serve in the Temple.
In chapter 3, Samuel is ministering before the Lord in the Temple under the watchful eye of the priest Eli who was getting quite elderly. One night, Samuel, who was still only a boy, thought he’d heard Eli calling to him in the night, “Samuel!”. He got up and ran to Eli to see what he needed but the old man said that he hadn’t called. So, Samuel went back to bed. This happened three times and each time Eli hadn’t been the one calling. On the third time, Eli realised it was God calling so he sent Samuel back to bed and said, when you hear the voice again, answer, “Speak Lord for your servant is listening”. So, Samuel did, and he heard God’s call to him.
So, in context with our lives today, if God had a mobile phone or a land line, what would his telephone number be? Someone once told me that God’s phone number could be Jeremiah 33 verse 3 as it says, “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know!”. How often does our phone ring and it makes us jump and we frantically scramble to answer it before the person on the other end rings off? Whether the metaphor of a phone call to God helps you or not, when we call on His name, He will always answer, not an answerphone, or a voicemail, “Hello this is God. Sorry I’m not available to take your call now but leave me a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can”. Thankfully, God doesn’t have an answerphone message.  God always answers our call, whether we connect with Him in our prayers, our worship songs or bible times, His response will always be one to one with us! So, make that call today and every day as God is waiting to spend that time with you! He has your number in His “phone”. He has you on speed dial!
Have a blessful week.
Jackie