When Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson wrote his memoirs of those crucial years following the Second World War, he titled them, “Present at the Creation.” Little did he know how true that was, for so much of the political world you and I are still dealing with was brought into being back in those days of the late 1940s.

This morning, I did as I usually do and called my mother on the cell phone. I was in New Orleans and she was on the farm, nearly 60 miles out in the countryside northwest of Birmingham. We greeted each other, exchanged pleasantries, and finally told each other “I love you” and that we would talk tomorrow.

As I ended the call, I found myself thinking what a miracle cell phone technology is. I am a child of 1940, and our family did not even get a telephone until I was in college. A long distance phone call 40 or 50 years ago was a cumbersome, expensive deal.

As a freshman at Berry College–that would be the fall of 1958–the student body was brought into the auditorium one Thursday night for an amazing demonstration. President John Bertrand introduced some gentlemen from the phone company who brought out heavy boxes of equipment and hooked them up. Then, they selected the student from farthest away and brought the girl from Alaska to the stage.

The men asked for her home phone number and—are you ready for this?—they direct-dialed it. They had bypassed the telephone operator. We were enthralled. The student spoke to her mother while we all listened in. We walked out into the night awestruck, knowing we had just visited the future.

Horse and buggy stuff, right? It is compared to this morning’s cell phone call. Long distance has evaporated, and with unlimited minutes, the cost of each call is negligible.

Two hours after the call to my mother, the May 12 issue of The New Yorker arrived. The article titled “In the Air” by Malcolm Gladwell (he wrote “The Tipping Point”) has been on my mind ever since. You’ll find it fascinating, but what I want to share here is only secondarily related to the subject he was discussing.

Gladwell is making a point concerning the discovery of the telephone and what a miracle it was. He writes, “In June of 1876, a few months after he shouted out, ‘Mr. Watson, come here,’ Alexander Graham Bell took his device to the World’s Fair in Philadelphia. There, before an audience that included the emperor of Brazil, he gave his most famous public performance.”

The emperor was led to an upper gallery where the receiver had been set up, while Bell was out of sight with the transmitter. Bell began to speak. The potentate dropped his jaw and an entire range of emotions washed across his face. When he could get the words out, he muttered, “This thing speaks!”

Gladwell quotes Bell’s biographer Charlotte Gray on what came next: “Soon a steady stream of portly, middle-aged men were clambering into the gallery, stripping off their jackets, and bending their ears to the receiver. ‘For an hour or more,'(Bell’s assistant) Willie remembered, ‘all took turns in talking and listening, testing the line in every possible way, evidently looking for some trickery, or thinking that the sound was carried through the air….It seemed to be nearly all too wonderful for belief.'”

Neanderthal stuff to this generation, but absolutely amazing to those present at the creation.

Or, take the radio. It’s old hat, everywhere, inexpensive, ignored. We rarely give it a thought.

In 1921, Dr. Luther Little, pastor of Charlotte’s First Baptist Church, learned that a local businessman had purchased a radio broadcasting station. He installed the antenna atop the tallest building in town, the Independence Building, which I believe had all of four stories.

To put this in context, remember this was only one year after KDKA in Pittsburgh and WWJ in Detroit had become the first radio stations in the nation. Dr. Little called on the owner of the Charlotte station and inquired about broadcasting his worship services. He was told that the owner wanted to give first refusal to his Presbyterian pastor. A few days later, Pastor Little learned that the Presbyterians had turned it down and the broadcast was his.

Somewhere I have in my possession a copy of a tape recording Dr. Little made many years later in which he told about that first broadcast. This was innovative, cutting edge technology, and the talk of the town. The night of the first broadcast, Mrs. Little stayed home to listen. “When church was over,” the pastor said, “I could not wait to rush home to find out how our service sounded on the radio. My wife met me at the door. She was ecstatic. She said, ‘It was wonderful. It sounded like you were in the next room. And just think–you were all of two blocks away!'”

The church, incidentally, continued broadcasting on the radio and within a few years, Dr. Little was heard throughout the Southeastern United States by an audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

Horse and buggy stuff, maybe. But a necessary step to get where we are today. Where are we today? Youtube. Enough said?

You can tell the same tales of the invention of the computer, the automobile, airplanes, or just about any other modern contraption that is so much an integral part of everyday life in 2008. Someone was first. Someone rubbed two sticks together and found fire and nothing was ever the same.

Someone was present at the creation.

I saw this happen. On a Monday night, the first services of the revival meeting in our church, Gretchen and Barbara were sitting beside Diane, herself a new member of our church. Diane had invited her co-workers to church and they had accepted.

Tuesday night, Gretchen and Barbara were back, and had brought with them their husbands Wayne and Jamie. Before the week was out, all four had responded to the invitation extended by the evangelist–Jamie and Barbara to be saved, Gretchen and Wayne joining from another church.

Sunday night, we baptized Jamie and Barbara–along with another twenty or more–and welcomed them into the full fellowship of our little church. Within a year or so, God had called Jamie Kinman into the ministry. Hugh Martin was their pastor by then (I had moved to another church). Since he reads this blog, we invite Brother Hugh to add his own memories here. The Kinmans were soon off to seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and began pastoring Baptist churches in that state. The last time I saw them they were serving the Lord in Mesquite, just east of Dallas.

Now, how many lives would you say Jamie and Barbara Kinman have touched for the Lord over these thirty-five or more years? And it all started the day Diane French invited Barbara and Gretchen to church.

All new creations begin with a single spark.

One of my favorite lines comes from the Old Testament prophet Zachariah. “For who has despised the day of small things?” (Zech. 4:10)

Anyone who knows the first thing about Scripture or anything at all about the works of God knows how He loves to use the small thing–the Baby in a manger, first and foremost. But the list is endless–think of the rod in Moses’ hand, the little boy’s lunch with which Jesus fed thousands, David’s sling, a song, a word, a touch, a look even, you.

God can even use you and me. In fact, He gets a special delight from doing so.

“You see your calling, brethren,” Paul wrote the Corinthian church. “There are not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong.”

He continues, “And the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God.” (I Cor. 1:26-29)

So, we are left without excuse.

Alibis and protests like “I’m only one” and “What good can my little bit do?” fall helpless to the ground before His power and might.

He can use your word to touch a life, and that life may change the world. He can use you to invite someone to church and thus set off a chain reaction that continues until Jesus’ return.

If you are available.

In words which Alexander Graham Bell might have used, “He’s calling for you. Pick up the phone.”