I ran across this article the other day on why video conferencing is really tiring. It was an excellent treatment of the question. But near the end the author said something that set my theological spider sense tingling:
“Right now, most everything is operating in a less than ideal manner, and we’re fumbling our way toward some version of “good enough.”
L.M. Sacasas
Sacasas’ main point is that because we are not actually physically present with our conversational partners, the subconscious mind is constantly frustrated in its attempts to infer meaning from body language and other non-verbal communication. The stuff that your brain normally does without your thinking about it is made taxing and even impossible.
That tore me out of the world of Zoom and Facetime and into the book of Romans:
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Romans 8:18-21
As Christians, our hope is that God is in the process of liberating our world. Our challenge is that we are not there yet. We view His final salvation as through a video chat. It’s there and yet we cannot yet put our hands on it. So we persevere in hope.
This pandemic has revealed to many that all our resiliency, our resources and ingenuity cannot spare us from the degradation of all creation. God reminds me to hold on for something better: that day when it is no longer a video chat.
Lord, I look forward to the day we see each other face to face.
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