Steeples, Spires and Cell Phone Towers

Who knew I could walk the same path day after day and never notice these two towers, so similar and yet so different? I always looked up the hill and only saw the church steeple. It's my church. I remember when it was built and the distress of so many members when there wasn't enough money for a steeple. I also remember the celebration of coffee and donuts the morning the steeple was finally hoisted to the roof of the sanctuary.

One morning, several years ago when I was a bit younger and exercised a lot more, I looked up the hill and saw this sight - two towers reaching into the sky. I saw two structures built specifically for communication.

One was a church steeple letting people know that the building on the hill is a church, a house of worship, a welcoming refuge. It gives, to all who look up, a sense of God's presence in the world.

The other offers a different message to the world: phone calls, text messages, email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and on and on. It allows us to spend hours looking down into our phones.

There is a difference between these two spires. One opens a flood of words and images between people. One opens a door between God and man. Maybe, just maybe, this image will inspire us to spend more time looking up and listening.

"....too many well-intentioned people are so preoccupied with the clatter of effort to do something for God that they don't hear Him asking that He might do something through them. We may admire the heaven-scaling desires of the tower builders on the Plain of Shinar, but they would have done better to listen and not drown out the call from heaven with the clang of the mason's trowel and the creaking of the scaffolding."

Thomas R. Kelly, "A Testament of Devotion"

Genesis 11:1-9