It seems like it should have been easier.
We've finally bought a home here -- in downtown Holland, that yellow brick house right on the corner of 13th and Washington. But it's not a real home without the necessities of life: electrical, garbage and telephone service. Bright and early Monday morning I stopped by city hall to arrange electrical service and garbage pick-up; a piece of cake. But you can only request telephone service by phoning the telephone company - and of course ours was shut off. I managed to put off that call till Tuesday afternoon, just dreading it. It's so hard to find anyone home over there.
It seemed to take forever to dial into a real person. I let my fingers do the walking through a maze of recorded instructions and options and choices, wondering all the while how you get phone service if you happen to be without a phone in the first place, and what if the phone you're using happens to be rotary dial and not touch tone... I felt so relieved when I finally got through to a real person - even though it took another twenty minutes to complete the order, recount my life and credit history, and explore such enhanced services as call-waiting, voice mail, conference calling, long distance carriers, local long distance carriers (isn't that a contradiction - how can long distance be local?). I'm just a simple guy. All I wanted was a phone - and a conversation with a real person.
How cold - that from the very people who once told us to "reach out and touch someone," you have to work so long and so hard just to talk to a human being, and then the person you finally reach isn't interested in you as a person but rather as someone who might buy more stuff. Of course, they're only doing their job - but in this era of impersonal, high tech wizardry, some of us yearn for a gentle, caring, human touch.
We're pretty low tech at Good Shepherd -- all we offer is that gentle, caring, human touch. It is the touch of our Lord in word and sacrament and the peace we share as worship begins; the touch of a new friend over coffee and cookies, in the prayer or work or food or ministry we share. It is the embrace of the God who offers us new life -- in both the life to come and the here and now. Share the embrace of our Christ, my friends, as we journey into Easter -- and remember that in his house there is always someone home.
Pastor Jim
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E-mail your comments and questions to Pastor Jim in care of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church at gslc@sirus.com.