Waiting for an alert

By Jeff Long

Wednesday, Oct. 3 will be a day like any other, I suspect. The British House of Commons will conduct Prime Minister's Question Time. Wednesday means I've got to get the litter boxes cleared and the garbage ready to go out. Others view Wednesday, any Wednesday, as a "wash day," a day for doing laundry. Wednesday doesn't carry with it the potential gloom of Monday, the going-back-to-work day, or Friday, the advent of a new weekend. It's an ordinary day for most.

But Wednesday 10/3/18 will take on some special significance. Unless there is a glitch or a last-minute postponement, your cell phone will ring (or if muted, will light up) on that Wednesday at precisely 1:18 pm Central Time with a 90-character government-originated wireless emergency alert. It won't be a personal message. Washington has been using emergency alerts for decades on TV and radio. Wireless alerts have been sent to cell phones since 2012 but Oct. 3rd's alert will be the first so-called "presidential alert."

No, Mr. Trump will not be sending us a personal message via Twitter. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will be the agency responsible. On balance, I'm hopeful it'll work well. More and more, you and I pay attention to our mobile phones and electronic devices while TV viewership and radio listenership continues a steady and irreversible decline. It makes sense for the feds to want to contact a mass audience all at once -- particularly in a national emergency where time counts.

This desire for massive, immediate contact has been going on for a long time. In ancient Israel, an agrarian society with people spread out over great distances, the shofar was the summoning tool of the age. Given today's technology, the shofar has gone the way of the buggy whip and the slide rule. (A shofar, a crooked ram's horn, is blown into today to announce the New Moon, or Rosh Hashanah, in Jewish tradition.) It's a liturgical device used now only for religious festivals. But in antiquity, the shofar was the wireless alert of its day, able to send out a strong, unmistakable tone to a vast audience that worship would soon begin -- and y'all come. (Zechariah 9:14) I've used a shofar. It makes a terrible sound, not all that more appealing that the pathetic groans that emanated from a trombone I briefly played in elementary school. Terrible, loud, and unmistakable are the point. You can't miss it.

There are times when our concentration needs to be broken in order for something important to be noticed. My fear is there is so much electronic beeping and buzzing and ringing in our world today that a presidential text message, possibly portending a vital development, might be ignored.

There is still hope, though. Last year's solar eclipse, a non-technical natural occurrence, lasted in Southeast Missouri for all of two minutes; it riveted us. It was one of the few things in my life that completely lived up to the hype. Many Christians look forward to the second coming of Christ. (Others think His 1st-century resurrection was that promised coming.) If those who wait for a second coming are rewarded with Jesus coming on the clouds (Mark 13:26), somehow, I think the effect will be akin to that celebrated eclipse. We'll get our noses out of our phones and look to the heavens. I hope all of our necks can still stand the strain. It'll be worth it for sure.