Fun with Telephones

My dad once told me that when life got boring in his old job, which seemed to be most of the time, the office staff found all manner of amusements to stave off tedium until 5pm.

One piece of hilarity was the telephone trick. One of the staff would sneak into the supervisor’s office and unscrew the telephone earpiece. (note to anyone under 20: telephones were different then; do not try this at home) The saboteur would put a piece of sticky tape on the inside of the grille, screw the piece back on and exit, sniggering. This would be repeated over several weeks with the result that the phone volume would get quieter -very, very gradually- and people on the other end of the phone would have to shout to be heard.

After the phone had been thoroughly bunged up, the staff would ‘cure’ the apparent deafness by pulling all the tape off at once. Of course by now everyone was used to bawling down the phone with the result that the first caller now deafened the supervisor. This caused great merriment among the technical staff.

I could do with your prayer that something similar doesn’t happen to us. Not that Michi is in the habit of sticking things to telephones, but culture has a habit of getting in the way of communicating with God, and more to the point, doing what he wants.

I mention this because I went for a meeting with our bank manager yesterday. (She thought I was after a loan, which made me laugh) We were looking at long-term options in Germany for getting a house/patch of land to use as a base for building the arts/environment community centre. I’ve come away with a load of information and some ridiculously large numbers. We are also researching different arts/environment communities in Germany and the UK, some of which have very odd beliefs.

What worries me is that as we wade through the figures and odd beliefs they could become normal in our minds. We are trying to check ideas against the bible as we come across them. We’d appreciate prayer that instead of them being like bits of sticky tape on our celestial phone, gradually cutting off God’s truth, we’d help other people hear the voice calling to them, despite all the stuff culture and beliefs try and put in the way.

How’s that for an evangelistic conversation stopper: “Let me fix your spiritual phone…”