Complicated

Luke 9:6
So they began their circuit of the villages, preaching the Good News and healing the sick. (NLT)

When I was a young boy there were two ways to make a telephone call. You either had a phone at home and often you shared that line with someone else on the street or you found a pay phone. There were pay phone everywhere.

Television was black and white and there were only two channels. And they went off the air by midnight. Either you watched what was on or you did not watch anything thing at all.

Computers? Well the military had them but that was about it. Banks did everything by hand with big old adding machines that had lots of keys and the bank kept track of your balance on big cardboard ledger cards. Nobody had credit cards.

Life was simple and it worked. Today we have cell phone that are more like science fiction than phones and we don't share the line with anyone. Home phone are going the way of the dinosaur being replaced by VOIP (voice over internet) services like Magic Jack or Vonage that allow you to call anyone in the world. Then there is Skype where you can call someone and actually see them on your computer screen as you chat with them.

Televisions show us hundreds of channels and we even can record the shows and watch them on our time schedule. Everyone has a computer and a cell phone and if you can't afford it, the government has a program to give you one.

Banking is mostly done from your computer and you pay your bills the same way. We charge so much on credit cards that we will never be able to pay off the debt and postage has ridden to an all time high, but most of us seldom send stuff by "snail mail" anymore.

Everything has become complicated. Just figuring out which control to use to turn on the TV can be a challenge. Sure we can do more and do it faster, but the learning curve is high and nothing is simple anymore.

This verse in Luke sounds so simple and yet we don't do it. We live in a complicated society and tend to complicate everything. But why?

Nothing in God's word is complicated. Nothing has prerequisites. We don't have to be saved for so many months or years before reaching out to others. We don't have to go to a Bible college to share God's word. No, all we have to do is go into the world of non-believers and talk about the Good News and heal the people.

So let's keep it simple. Let's speak to that person on street next time. Let's share our testimony of what it means to us to have a relationship with Jesus. And if they are sick, let's reach out and heal them.