Labor Saving Devices

Humans are always trying to figure out how to make hard things easy, or at the very least, easier. Back in the late 1700s, one of the hard things for farmers in the southern United States to do, was to pick seeds out of cotton. It was so time consuming, that few farmers actually grew much cotton.

Then, a man named Eli Whitney invented a labor saving device that he called the cotton gin. Over night, cotton went from an after thought to a major cash crop in southern United States.

There have been many such devices invented over the years. Things that have made things like sawing, washing clothes and other menial household chores simpler. Yet, in spite of all these inventions, the hardest things in life remain hard.

It is just as hard as it has ever been for a doctor to tell someone that they have cancer. It is no easier for a person to say the words "I'm sorry" and truly mean it. It is just as difficult to say "I forgive you," from the heart, as it was two thousand years ago.

While we humans have developed devices to take the place of our hands, there is nothing that can take the place of the heart. No amount of denial will remove the wounds and joys experienced within the human soul.

Modern psychology, in all its wisdom, is better at uncovering, than it is at curing. All too often, after the mind's river has been dredged, the corpses lie on the shore, simply to rot in a different place.

It is only as we approach God, slowly, in our quiet times, that we can understand. Hard things have to be hard, so that in our weaknesses, we might find God's strength.

There will never be a device to experience our deepest feelings or, make it easier to achieve our soul-desires. For, it is there, in our tear-filled darkness, far from technology, that we find our own, desperate need for God.