My latest thoughts?

It's been a while since posting here, and I was thinking about it today. Lately I have been busy with studying, work, and vacationing, and I haven't had to think about such mundane things as church :)

We were talking about friends yesterday. Actually, we were talking about running away. We think leaving the area where we are will make us feel better. It's not so much where we are, but where we are in proximity to the virtual faces that we see every day.

That is what bugs us - seeing the faces, but not seeing the people. Social networking has made it very easy to connect, or reconnect, with people, without actually spending time with them. This is a poor excuse for fellowship. If we continue on with this pattern, we will find ourselves surrounded by "friends", but very lonely.

This is how Stefani and I feel now. We have some very good friends in our lives; people in California, people in Utah, people all over the place. This has been a fantastic part of Facebook and social networking. Unfortunately, we also need the closeness and intimacy of face-to-face.

Without naming names, we have some good friends that are close to us in proximity. We appreciate those friends, but we miss the closeness of some old friendships. We are constantly reminded of what we had, and it is that feeling of emptiness that makes us want to stick our tails between our legs and run. Our hope is that by putting physical distance between us, we can either severe the ties that keep us virtually connected, or strengthen them. Either way, we can see the faces and know that we are too far away from each other physically to really care whether or not they want to visit us.

I asked Stefani an important question. When we do finally run away, and we want to find new local friends, where do we go? Church? Why would we do that someplace else, but not here? Is there a way that we can find new local friends in our present, and try to forget the hurts from the past?

So may questions, and not a single answer ... not even a clue.