91Èȱ¬

On this day in 1958 the General Post Office announced it would spend £35m modernising the national telephone system in order to popularise use of the telephone. At the time there were on average less than two calls a day made per telephone in the UK.  Today, everywhere you look, people are glued to their phones, talking, texting, watching films, checking information or listening to music.  Some people are so addicted to their phones that they try to go on phone holidays, locking their phones away except for emergency use.  By doing so they’re trying to recapture some of the space for peace and quiet or for face to face communication that seems to have disappeared with the omnipresence of the mobile phone.  We human beings are instinctive communicators.  We don’t only communicate through words, but through body language, picking up signals about how others are feeling and reacting towards us.  Prayer is our attempt to communicate with God, and also God’s attempt to communicate with us.  An old liturgical prayer says, ‘O God, You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank You is itself Your gift.  Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to Your greatness, but makes us grow in Your grace’.  Prayer isn’t something we do for God.  It’s something God does for us, to remind us daily how much we are loved and gifted with the graces we need.Creator God, you made us for yourself, and our hearts reach out to you.  Help us each day to offer you our thoughts and words and to listen for the voice of your love.  Amen.