Never, "No Service"

I know it seems silly.Some would have perhaps welcomed it.But, I felt panic.This past week, speaking at a conference, I was in the backwoods of coal country far in the Appalachians when there was a major cell phone outage. I am not sure what happened. It affected the service even of competing providers. Service had already been intermittent and spotty. Yet, I had always been able to walk up a hill and get reception. Now, nothing. "No Service." Two words that had profound effect on my state of mind. I entertained the possibility that I had broken my phone. Checking with others at the motel where I was staying, I discovered it wasn't just mine. Suddenly the hills that shorten both ends of the day in that narrow valley seemed to have advanced closer together closing in and penning me up, keeping me isolated from the rest of the world. I was cut off. I felt a bit desperate. I tried to think of other ways to "get out." Ludicrously, even smoke signals crossed my mind. How would I contact my wife, and she, me? What if there were an emergency? How would I know? Although I was raised with landline phones starting out way back when they still had rotary dials, the song's language was already a bit antiquated. So, I'm sure it's close to meaningless to today's millennials. It went, "Central's never busy, always on the line. You may hear from heaven almost anytime." That song may be totally irrelevant, but, they can understand "No service." "No internet connection." What if suddenly we lost all capacity of contacting God? What if all possibility of communication were cut off? No Service. What an awful thing to contemplate. I noticed that from time to time the "No Service" indicator would suddenly switch to "Searching..." At some point, if the phone keeps searching, it will find a signal, a connection. If you feel you have lost contact with God, just start searching. At some point you'll make connection. With God, the service is never missing. It's always there. When you go to pray, there's always coverage. Never, "No Service." NOTE: I began writing this waiting for church to begin. During service, a sister before singing testified how God had delivered her from three years of deep depression. She ended her testimony with "You never get too low that Jesus can't hear your cry."

Never, "No Service"

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