Your Inbox

Have you been getting our weekly email?  For most of our email inboxes, there is an automatic filter that pushes incoming email into various places.  Most personal messages from a personal email account goes directly into the “inbox.”  Emails from twitter, facebook, or instagram go into “social.”  Correspondence from companies or with numerous recipients usually end up in “promotions.”  And then there’s the “junk” inbox, where all kinds of strange emails and scams congregate.
  But sometimes the filters get it wrong!  Sometimes a newsletter you want to read by your favorite author, musician, or club gets filtered and hidden away amongst the piles of promotions!  (My favorite weekly is by author/friend Lois Olmstead www.timeoutwithlois.com).  Sometimes a potential client, employee, or long lost friend ends up in “junk” because you’ve never received an email from them before.  And sometimes, the church email with links to the service, important announcements, and words of encouragement gets filtered away and never opened - even if you wanted to!
It’s a great metaphor.  God is ALWAYS trying to reach us, and uses various ways to do so!  The author of Hebrews opens his letter reflecting on the past and present, “at many ties and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”  Today, he speaks through his Spirit (John 14: 26), yet like the people in the Old Testament who kept missing what God was saying and like the people who listened to Jesus in person but they still missed his points - and like humans SINCE, our brains have a tendency to filter some of God’s important messages into the wrong folder!  Hebrews 2:1 still applies, “therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard.”
Yes, if you are getting this message, you have a church that cares about you, wants to involve you, and enjoys the thought that you’re on the other end of every communication.  Will you make sure today that our messages aren’t getting filtered away, and that we have your correct email?  
But more importantly, use the metaphor to make sure God is in your appropriate inbox.  After all, he is social, has a ton of people on his mailing list, is promoting the best product the world could ever see (redemption & salvation!), the world considers Him “junk,” and the devil will do anything he can to keep you from getting His Word.  
See you in the inbox.  SK