The "Touch-tone phone"
Welcome to Thought for the Day. Now it was on this day in history 61
years ago that the touch tone phone was rolled out in the USA.
If you have no idea about what I’m talking about let me explain. You know
that thing you have in your pocket for checking facebook, texting your mum and buying
your groceries. It’s called a mobile phone right?
Well you probably remember those things called landlines, and some of
you may still have one. Going right back in history (and I can remember these,
and many of the listeners will be able to as well) phones used to have a big
dial on them that you would rotate round to get the right number. The mechanism
inside would send the right number of pulses down the line to connect you to
the right person.
But on this day in November 1963 the touch tone phone was produced.
Instead of a pulse, at the push of a button you got sounds like this.
You might just remember them from your dial up modem in the late 90s.
Well communication has come a long way hasn’t it. I can send a photo of
my kids to my uncle in Australia in a second on my mobile. I can get the news
in an instant.
But there’s a kind of communication that is far more amazing. In fact it’s
out of this world. I’m not talking about “ET phone home”, but the fact that you
can speak to God today. Yes that’s right, you can talk to God and you can
listen to God. Talking to God is called prayer, and you can do it any time in
any place. You can tell God how you feel and how you need help and best of all you
can ask him for Jesus to forgive you and give you new life. But you can also listen to him as he speaks
to us through the Bible.
There’s a Bible verse that is jokingly called God’s phone number. It’s
Jeremiah 33:3 and it says “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you
great and mighty things, which you do not know”.
God’s phone number! Why not try it sometime. Thank you so much for
listening. Have a great day.
Charlie Newcombe 18NOV24.