For a series of tubes, the internet is gosh darned amazing!

In the past few months two long dormant but important connections have been renewed via the tubes that end in my living room.

A while back a friend from college contacted me out of nowhere. She invited me to join her network on LinkedIn. It was the second such invitation I received. I hadn’t even heard of LinkedIn before.

About a week or so ago another friend from way back contacted me. We had lost touch a few years ago. He now lives in the Twin Cities area (he moved there from Kansas City). He found me by googling my name.

In both cases, we’ve been emailing back and forth since that initial contact.

This touches on an aspect of my character that I’ve never been particularly proud of. I am a terrible long distance friend! Or I was, until I acquired a few friends of the virtual variety. The point is, I have let a great number of once significant friendships go only because I moved away from those particular people. It’s happened every time I’ve moved, too. Reconnecting with these two people from completely different time periods in my life has reminded me how important they once were to me. Yeesh, I even attended my Senior Ball with the college friend (she’s a she, obviously).

Now because of email I can almost be with them. My college friend sends me pictures. She just sent me a set the other day. My friend from the Twin Cities, Craig, with whom I have shared some of the most significant ministry experiences of my life, emailed me the other night just to tell me that Joel Hanson (late of PFR, and resident of the Twin Cities area) performed in worship at his church the other day.

So the internet is allowing me to be a better friend than I really am. Is that good or bad? I’m thinking good, so far.