Send Me a Text…

Send Me a Text…

According to my extensive and laborious research on the internet (and if it is on the internet, it must be true, right?) texting has been around for 24 years. For the DeLoaches, it has only been around for ten or so years – not exactly early adopters. Love it or loathe it, texting is here to stay. It seems everybody is texting these days and they are texting everywhere: in church, in cars, in meetings, in the check-out line, and even in funerals (yep, I have witnessed this more than once).

 

For my children, it is the primary form of communication. For me, it often substitutes for an email. For my marriage, we will use texts as reminders, and every-so-often as a “love note.”

 

Whenever I receive a text “out of thin air” if you will, I am most often warmed with gratitude that someone, somewhere, thought of me. It may be something silly, or provocative, or somber, but to know I was remembered and “texted” is in itself a gift.

 

To be thought of, to be remembered, to call to mind…it means that we matter. Our existence matters. Our place in the world matters. What we do, or not do, matters. You matter.

 

“What are human beings that you are mindful of them? Yet you have made them a little lower than the angels.” (Psalm 8:4,5) God calls us to mind because we matter to God. We are in a real and tangible way an idea of God.

 

Maybe, just maybe our very purpose in life is to remember one another. We are to move through this earth on our brief journey and remember: remember our family, our friends, and our neighbors. We are to remember the neglected, the overlooked and the ignored. We are to remember our enemies, victims and the abused. We are to remember one another.

 

My work with persons with developmental disabilities is mostly about remembering those who are so often forgotten, neglected or ignored. I not only remember, but I call to the minds and engage the consciousness of others that they remember too.

 

When you remember you then have a task, a choice to respond or ignore and forget. Either way, when you remember you then must decide what to do. What you do becomes your life.

 

In a small way that is why I write to you…that you may know you are remembered and loved.

 

Thinking of you,

 

Greg