Do you hear what I hear?

There are so many distractions in life these days that did not exist when I was growing up. There was no facebook (gasp! oh, horrors!) or other social networking tools. There was no email, twitter, or blogs. There were video games, but they were exceedingly boring and not much of a distraction for me. There were no cell phones where you could not escape from texts or calls. There were no Mp3 players filled with 1,000 of your favorite songs; only radio, records, and live music (the best of the three). There was no cable TV with 100's of nonchoices, no VCR's or DVD players; there were 4 basic networks, and they didn't run 24 hours a day. When I was growing up, we didn't have five or more extra curricular activities....you were something special if you had just one. I would say that the family generally had only one or two cars in my day, but I can remember a time when there were more cars and trucks in our driveway than we had drivers for. But there didn't seem to be this insatiable need to be entertained; we were busy with work. I don't know; maybe your own experience was different. In our house, if you admitted to being bored, it was quickly remedied with extra work. What scares me the most about present day trends is not the prolonged adolescence or irresponsibilty so much as it is this culture's inability to listen to God's still, small voice because we're so busy drowning it out with noise and activities that have no value in eternity.