Connections

Yesterday I was told about a gentleman who graduated high school a couple years before me - that would make him approximately only 52 years old. He took his own life this past week. While he didn't live around here anymore, and I hadn't seen or heard of him for all these many years, the news still had quite an impact on me - unexpected, almost, the depth of the reaction. I experienced the same sort of feelings last year when a lady from our church, one whom I didn't even know except to recognize where she and her husband usually sat in the sanctuary, also took her own life. The thoughts in both scenarios came immediately to my mind...who was he/she close to? Couldn't someone have recognized or suspected that something was wrong - that they needed some guidance or intervention or whatever it was they needed? Didn't the Holy Spirit try to nudge someone in their lives to call or contact them somehow? And I know, people are reluctant to share those things with others, and everyone's busy and we're not really responsible for others...or are we? The question occurs to me that in this day of instant computerized communication, i.e. e-mail, facebook, twitter, etc., that it may be possible that we have somehow replaced real, true relationship and one on one face to face conversation with this new almost "superficial" method of relating and connecting to others? Now, I'm not bashing facebook or e-mailing or any of those methods of communication - I use them all the time. But what I am suggesting is that I'm afraid for some of us, that's all the interaction we have with others - if we're not on the computer, we're on the phone, texting, messaging. Is that what occurred in these two people's lives? We won't ever know. But it seems to me it would be alot easier to "put on a happy face" when no one is really seeing that face. For all our technological advances, let's not forget the value of true human contact, touch and interaction. You never know who might need it.