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