Family Ties

Readings: Genesis 28:14--"Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

I had the opportunity to spend a day yesterday with a family that was not my own. Every year, most all the females of this family gather together to visit and to assure that cousins, cousins once-removed and so on know who each other is beyond the yearly Christmas card picture. It was a nice time for this outsider to witness. I do like it when families stay families.

The ages of these ladies ranged from three to beyond 80. All decades were well represented. There was one happy incident that made this gathering all the more positive. The cabin had a tin roof and the over-all location in general made for lousy phone reception. Yep...a cabin full of 21st century females and not one working smart phone. What a nice site to see. The family members weren't strewn throughout the cabin staring at screens; on the contrary, they were talking--face to face. They were laughing, not LOL-ing. It was refreshing to see. They were truly connecting. Conversations could be random just that way they should be when sitting in the same room having eye-to-eye chats. No "????" message needed. The facial expressions and voice inflections gave all the needed clues to be able to keep the changes in conversation topics flowing.

We live in a precarious time when technology is horning in on one of our most important needs as humans--we need people-to-people communication, no electronic device-to-people communication. Sure, it's great to use in a pinch or when distance is an issue. But in the same house, in the same room, it has no place. We need to get back to learning what it truly means to look one another in the eye. We need to keep our family ties strong so that our future generations will know the sanctity of family love and trust. 

Peace be with you.