Do you remember AOL? I bet some of you don’t remember what AOL even stands for. In fact some of you may not have even known it stood for something. So, I’ll not tell you. Let’s see what you remember.
But seriously, AOL developed one of the most iconic noises of that era. It was that blessed noise, “You’ve got mail!”. They made a movie based upon it, cleverly titled, “You’ve got mail”. To me, that sound was like a beautiful chorus of sweet baby cherubs singing the Hallelujah chorus. I was so excited when I would get an email. I can remember waiting five minutes to establish the connection, trying to call a different location because the AOL phone number was busy, and then waiting for everything to load.
It was like Christmas morning when you would hear, “You’ve Got Mail”. And to make sure that there would be presents under the tree when I got there, I would sign up for anything that would be willing to send me an email from time to time. “Would I love to hear more about this exciting new product to reduce ear hair? SURE! I’m only 14 but you can never be too educated right? Sign me up!” Bam, now I’ve got mail.
How times have changed.
Now I don’t hear “You’ve Got Mail” anymore. In fact all I hear is a small chime. But now, getting email is much more than listening for the baby cherubs. We use email for far more than my 14 year old mind could have dreamed of.
Now the goal of my email box is to eliminate with the precision of a ninja all foreign and unnecessary emails. The unsubscribe button and I have become friends. I am ruthless when it comes to junk email. I cannot have a cluttered up email inbox. It is not good for me. When it gets crazy cluttered, I loose sight of others emails, and I can easily become distracted by “The 10 quick and easy steps to rid yourself from the plague of ear hair!” To keep my email clean I have to do this.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time: Am I as ruthless with sin as I am with junk email?
What I mean is, do I work equally as hard to get rid of sin in my life? Do I work to diligently to rid myself of the evil of sin? Do I push towards the goal of Christ likeness with the same tenacity that I apply towards keeping my inbox pure?
I think that many of us have a very soft view of sin. If we truly believed that sin is as harmful as it is we would act like it. It would change the way that we live. We would set up certain protocols when temptations entered our life. We would work diligently towards eliminating sin’s hold on our life.
I wish that I was more of a sin assassin than a junk mail assassin.
What are your thoughts?
~Peter
