Carolyn had just discovered a...
Illustration
Carolyn had just discovered a whole new world. It was mind-
boggling to think that with a simple, local telephone call she was actually communicating with a computer on the other side of the world -- and the connection was free! Over the last several days, she had followed branch upon branch of on-line information, often allowing her imagination to take her off in a direction which was tangential to her primary task. Sometimes she would have no idea where she was in electronic space nor how she had gotten there. Carolyn tried to envision the thousands upon thousands of miles of electronic cabling, the electronic highways of the internet via which she could zoom around the world almost instantaneously to search whatever data base struck her fancy. She supposed satellite communications were involved in the process too. Not that the "how" of it particularly mattered. She didn't need to know how the communications links worked in order to use them. It struck Carolyn that this worldwide communication web was somehow analogous to the ways in which prayer connected the one who prayed to God -- and to other persons. She knew there was a definite power involved there -- not something describable like electric power -- but something she had experienced nonetheless. Perhaps experience was the only way to have any sense of the power of prayer, the connection of the human spirit with the Holy Spirit. One didn't have to know how it worked; one only needed to have faith that it worked, and that could only come through one's own experience. -- Fannin
boggling to think that with a simple, local telephone call she was actually communicating with a computer on the other side of the world -- and the connection was free! Over the last several days, she had followed branch upon branch of on-line information, often allowing her imagination to take her off in a direction which was tangential to her primary task. Sometimes she would have no idea where she was in electronic space nor how she had gotten there. Carolyn tried to envision the thousands upon thousands of miles of electronic cabling, the electronic highways of the internet via which she could zoom around the world almost instantaneously to search whatever data base struck her fancy. She supposed satellite communications were involved in the process too. Not that the "how" of it particularly mattered. She didn't need to know how the communications links worked in order to use them. It struck Carolyn that this worldwide communication web was somehow analogous to the ways in which prayer connected the one who prayed to God -- and to other persons. She knew there was a definite power involved there -- not something describable like electric power -- but something she had experienced nonetheless. Perhaps experience was the only way to have any sense of the power of prayer, the connection of the human spirit with the Holy Spirit. One didn't have to know how it worked; one only needed to have faith that it worked, and that could only come through one's own experience. -- Fannin
