A cautionary tale for our time …

This week, I arrived early to a coffee shop for a meeting. Already coming from another meeting, it didn’t make sense to go to the shelter, only to backtrack 30 minutes later.

So there I was, answering an infinite string of emails, with a good coffee and some people watching to keep me entertained.

If I were to look over the top of my laptop screen, one row over at about the “10 spot” on a clockface, sat a young woman, coffee drink in front of her, while her thumbs furiously fired away on her phone. An amazing athletic feat! … No seriously, it was something to watch!

And if I were to look over the top of my laptop screen, in the same row, but at the “2 spot” on a clockface, there was a second young woman, coffee drink on the table in front of her, also all in on her phone.

Each looked as if they were waiting for something to happen.

Now and then, between keystrokes, each of them would briefly and furtively look up and scan the room. But in a manner so nonchalantly that it suggested they were still more interested in their phones.

Accuse me of voyeurism if you will, but activity like this draws my attention from a gospel perspective. I’ve often written about how digital interaction is increasingly replacing face-to-face human interaction.

As I watched, the two women continued on in similar behavior for a solid 10 minutes. An intense focus on the digital device in their hand, a scant look up and then back to the phone.

Then the most spectacular thing happened!

Coffee Drinker No. 1 on the left, set her phone down, yawned and stretched, and took a longer look around the room.

As her gaze fell on Coffee Drinker No. 2, her eyes grew big, and she exclaimed, “Oh my God! Is that you!”

With a hearty laugh, she pocketed her phone, grabbed her coffee drink and danced the 10 feet that separated them and gave Coffee Drinker No. 2 an animated hug!

Friends … both of them had been waiting for the other!

They had been communicating back and forth with their thumbs for a quarter of an hour before they realized they sat a hop, skip and a jump away from each other.

But they were so invested in their phones, they didn’t look up to see the person they were waiting for … was right there!

I concede that I may be making too much of this brief interaction. I’m not a sociologist, nor a technologist.

But I must say that all of my pastoral senses tell me that we have an interpersonal communications crisis on our hands.

Humbly, I think it’s concerning. Amen.

Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.