In the news about the Die Post (the state-owned mail company in Switzerland): “Die Post verändert sich. Filialen schliessen. Dienste warden digital. Es stösst auch auf Widerstand” (The Post is changing. Settlements are closing. Services go digital. There is resistance.). This is not just something Swiss, it is happening in all countries.
Some weeks ago, I was talking to someone in the Netherlands who was complaining about how much she has to pay for a letter to be delivered. Nowadays, you don’t even get the guarantee that the letter will be delivered the next day. It might even be 3 or 4 days later!
I said to her: “It’s your fault.” She looked at me with incredulous eyes, like “Why me?” I said: “It is because you don’t send enough letters and that’s why they have to reduce their services, up the prices and try to make it work within those limited parameters.
I am old enough to remember the times we did not have email, WhatsApp, Facetime, Messenger, Facebook and what-not. When you wanted to inform family, customers, potential customers, send invoices, insurance papers, damage claims, there was only one sure way: you sent it by mail. Die Post was your biggest and reliable friend and Postman Pat was not only delivering envelopes, but he also contributed to the social cohesion of your village or neighbourhood.
But how many times do we send a physical letter nowadays? Very few times. Invoices come into our inboxes, we speak to family far away through some video service and we submit our stuff through secure websites. And Die Post gets the short end of the stick and we complain about the prices and the quality of their services.
Anybody with some economic sense that looks at these developments can have seen this coming from miles and years away. But we still resist when it happens. Why is that? Why can’t we accept the inevitable?
Galatians 6:8 tells us: “A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
God gives us the warning – beforehand – that our behaviour, our ‘sowing’ has consequences. But then when we get the predicted ‘short end of the stick’, we complain. We can see it coming from miles and years away. But we still complain when it does come.
Better then that we learn to ‘sow to please the Spirit’. We can see the results coming from miles away: “from the Spirit we will reap eternal life”.
Let’s be keen to sow in the right place today. And tomorrow. And all the days after that. I can see those results coming from a mile away as well!