Prior to the birth of
our grandson, Matthias, Dottie and I gave no thought to FaceTime or Skype. Why
would we. Telephones work just fine for talking to people. But grandchildren,
as it turns out, aren’t “people” in the same sense that everyone else is.
Our particular
grandchild lives 1,900 miles due west at the foot of Wyoming’s Wind River
Mountains. We see him as often as we can (this weekend, for example), but that’s
not nearly often enough to keep up with the changes happening in the life of someone under the age of one. I was looking at his birth announcement photos
this morning—the announcement is on the refrigerator. Matthias doesn’t look
anything like those pictures taken less than nine months ago. New activities and skills seem to pop up nearly every day.
And that’s why God
gave us FaceTime and Skype. For a while we were just watching him and I can still remember the first time he looked at
his dad’s phone and the picture caught his interest. Since then he's clearly watching us as well—a relationship has formed.
How well he knows the
faces in the phone is a question for this weekend when we all meet up in
Denver. Of course, if he doesn’t recognize us this trip, seeing us weekly on
the screen will sooner or later result in greater friendship between the generations.
So despite many
misgivings about technology—it’s not as benign as we’d like to think—I’m a
Facetime fan and I think Matthias is too.
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