Making Connections

Some weeks ago, my old FitBit broke. It wasn’t a huge surprise; I’ve had it for many years, and I am not always the most careful person. Over time, it had acquired several cracks on the screen, I’d gone through 4 or 5 straps, there was a mysterious chip out of the back metal part…

So when it finally one day just stopped: oh well.

Fortunately, I am in a position where I could get myself a newer model; still nothing fancy (I am hard on my devices!) but nice enough to accomplish what I want.

However, I was left with the proprietary charger, and the left-over strap from the old device. It would have really been easy to just toss away, but on a whim I offered it on the local free-recycling group. I didn’t expect it to go anywhere, but there was no harm holding on to it for a little bit longer.

As it turns out, there was someone else in the group that had been looking for that charger… they’re no longer available for purchase, and without it, their FitBit hadn’t worked in months. So we arranged a time for the exchange.

When we met, this person was absolutely delighted. We had a lovely conversation, they asked about the church and I was able to give them a walk-through. We spoke about faith and spiritual journeys and the power of prayer. The interaction was only maybe 15 minutes, but it was positive for us both.

We never know how we are going to find connections, and we are not able to predict the outcome of them. But if we don’t make any effort, we definitely won’t have them. It would have been easy for me to just bin that cord, but instead it served to connect – in more ways than one.

While we know the importance of connections, and we value our established ones, it can also be helpful to remember that not every connection needs to be a deep or long one to be of benefit. God puts a lot of people into our paths each day, and puts us into the paths of a lot of others. When we’re fortunate enough to make a connection, whether it’s long or short, we can choose to see the holiness of the moment, and delight in the unexpected ways we've been brought together.