The Heart directs your life more than any smart device
I've been a fairly reluctant and late adopter of the mobile phone.
Peter Baker | 21:32, Thursday, 19 July 2012
In the few years I’ve had one, the simple mobile has become the smartphone - a device so clever that making phone calls is just one of the many functions possible. Now it is a means to almost everything - watching programmes, listening to music, sending emails, navigating a car journey, video conferencing, text messaging, status updating and even interfacing with the hi-fi system and TV at home.
The TV industry hasn’t stood still either. That old box in the corner of the room has also grown up and become a 'smart TV', rivalling the myriad functions of the hand-held devices. Your television can be a hub for other leisure activities like browsing the web, viewing photos, social media, playing computer games, and downloading music. In the middle of this fight for supremacy and market share is the development of ever more clever computers (or is that notebooks or do I mean tablets?). They are capable of doing it all in one comfortable and convenient package.
One thing I have noticed in this mad rush to invent faster, smarter, cooler technologies is this. You can begin with a phone, a computer or a TV, but what everyone wants in the end is one device to rule them all. A controller of the controllers. Something which can be used as the portal for every activity whether in work, at home, on the move or in the car.
This principle of convergence has become the holy grail in leisure technology.
The human heart has a similar function to that of such a universal media device. For the heart is the point of convergence, the command and control centre of the personality. There is where life values take shape, where emotions are turned into actions, where the mind engages the will and consequences follow. It is for this reason that the writer of the biblical book of Proverbs wrote, "Guard your heart, for it determines the course of your life."
If you belong to the Highfields family of congregations, you should already know that Proverbs 4:23 is our motto text for 2012.
So halfway through the year, what shape is your heart in?
