There’s Not an App for That

 We live in a world that is changing quickly. In my lifetime I have seen the telephone go from a wall hung device that you had to rotary dial (oh, and Google “party line” sometime) to a pocket friend who can find anyone on your list with just a voice command. When I was in grade school, if I wanted to find my friends, I road my bike to various locations and searched. When I found the other bikes, I knew where everyone was. Now they can send me their location by dropping a pin on a virtual map. Speaking of maps, we all used to have various maps in the glove compartment of the car. Funny, I never ever remember finding gloves in there. When we were first married, my wife liked to plan these awesome summer road trips for the kids. She had this ginormous atlas (her word not mine) that covered the whole United States. It would have pencil tracings, towns and locations circled, and even notes in some places. Now we just type in an address and Seri tells us how to do the rest.

It seems that now there is an app for anything you need. Need insurance? There’s an app for that. Need a discount coupon? There’s an app for that too. My phone is filled with little apps to do all the little things I want to do. From email to Big Box stores, theme parks to current weather, there’s an app for that.

And that’s where the problem occurs. Apps are fine for the mundane, trivial, and inconsequential parts of our lives. Yes, they do often make things easier. but they can often get in the way of what’s really important. Relationships are still build on day to day personal communication, trust, and commitment to growing together. Husbands and wives need to be able to communicate without distractions. Our children need to know that they are more important than technology. They need us to listen. There’s no app for that. Our relationship with God is not something you can put into an app. A schedule can be a reminder, but it is still up to us to pray, search the scriptures, and meditate on spiritual things as we worship with single-hearted devotion with our Creator. No, there’s no app that can cover that. Just the Scriptures, a lot of prayer, & Jesus. So use the apps, by all means. Just don’t forget 

National Read a Book Day

 

Today is National Read a Book Day. So when was the last time you read a book? For children, it is not as big of an issue. They still have book time in their school schedules. Even those too young to read usually don’t have trouble finding someone to read to them. I mean, what grandparent doesn’t want to read their grandchildren a book? It’s part of what we do.

I remember when the Harry Potter books came out. Everyone was talking about them. People ordered them months ahead or stood in line for hours to get one. I casually ignored it, like water off a duck’s back. Then the first movie came out and I did find it interesting. I think I liked the creatures best. One of my 7^th grade students, Sarah,  was a huge fan so we often talked about it at break or other times. Her father was a good friend and our school IT guy so even we sometimes talked about it. She said that the movies missed so much, as movies often do. I was encouraged to read the books. I laughed and told her that I had no intention of buying a whole set of children’s books. The kind, young student that she was, she offered to loan me the books so I could read them. I read the first book in about a week and a half. Slow by her standards, but not bad for a science teacher who had to shuffle around time slots to read and still grade papers. Then I read the second and the third. By the time Christmas rolled around, I found myself in that terrible book limbo world dreaded by all book aficionados. I had to wait for the last book to be written! Yet I found myself craving more. I realized this was the first time since college that I had read a book for sheer pleasure. All my reading had become texts, books, and journals related to my teaching. So I looked for more. I read a trilogy about Nicholas Flamel and a series called The Dragon Keeper Chronicles (again, courtesy of Sarah). I started searching through my wife’s collection. I read the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all in one summer. I even started Moby Dick before I had to come up for air. (Moby Dick is a great read, but not one to take lightly!)

Nowadays I do mostly Audible books because reading has become more tedious with trifocals. I have also decided to not start a series until all the books are written. A few years ago my son-in-law got me excited about a series of books that he had read. It wasn’t until after I had finished the first book that he decided to tell me that the author had written 10 books and then died before finishing the last one. Fortunately his widow found another author who compiled his notes and finished the series. It turned out all fine and good in the end, but, never again. I’m sticking to one shot wonders now. (Ok, maybe a trilogy, but no more than that.)

So when was the last time you read something for fun? I encourage you to find you genre, and whether by old style book or modern mp3, make a goal to read at least one book before Christmas. You can thank me later.

(Oh, and thank you Sarah.)