Our extremely elderly American Eskimo dog Signe knows her family and their movements better than she knows what dogs do. Lying at her master's feet she knows whether to get up and follow Elizabeth when she rises or to stay put because Elizabeth is just getting a cup of tea and will be right back.

· She's right at the door even before we can grab the car keys, but doesn't budge if we head for the laundry room.

· The sound of the refrigerator door opening coupled with the crinkling sound of something being messed with brings her running, but opening the freezer door doesn't interest her at all.

· Get out the can opener and she goes ballistic; grab the bottle opener, spatula, or potato peeler out of the same drawer and she could care less.

Signe knows our every move, all our vocal tones, our daily schedule down to the minute. But strangely, Signe just doesn't "get" the concept of the telephone. If we're out of town and have the phone held down so she can hear our voice (no smart remarks out there!), she's clueless. We can call, say her name, cajole. Forget it. Snore. Nothing. If there isn't a person, there isn't a purpose. She dozes in the corner and shows no interest in the disembodied voice floating out that plastic tube, drifting through the air.

Staying connected these days is both far easier and infinitely more complex than it has ever been before. Cell phones, e-mail, pagers, call-forwarding--all keep you constantly in touch. Can you even imagine still depending on snail-mail to keep you informed.

· Can you feel the isolation continents and oceans and mountains used to impose on people?

· Can you fathom it taking months instead of moments to hear back from your friends and family?

· Could your business continue if the flow of constant information we are all so used to was suddenly reduced to the merest trickle?

· Could you stand to hear about births, deaths, marriages, tragedies, and triumphs weeks or even months after they had occurred?

That was the reality of long-distance life only a little over a century ago. Even with the advent of the telegraph and telephone there were still whole communities, whole countries, that remained cut off from any communication other than the occasional arrival of a smudged and battered envelope. And even though letter-writing was honed to a fine art, it couldn't replace the sound of a loved one's voice, the sound of sighs and laughter. Bringing a long-distance voice up so close that it whispers in your ear is the gift of technology. Recognizing a disembodied voice as it drifts through our cell phone or computer is a well-developed skill of postmoderns.

AOL hosted an interesting contest. The usually anonymous voice that proclaims "You've Got Mail" has been replaced by a selection of twelve different celebrities quoting those ubiquitous words.

How many of those twelve voices can you identify correctly?

How many different people can you recognize just by hearing their voice as it floats though fiber optic wiring or dances across silicon chips?

The number would probably surprise you. Even the voices of those we haven't heard for years instantly draw a picture in our mind of a familiar face, a crooked smile, bushy eyebrows, or an imposing stance. It only takes a word or two and we can envision the whole person. One word and we feel touched by their whole presence.

In today's gospel text Jesus reminds those who are quizzing him that "my sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me" (verse 27). Vulnerable and defenseless sheep depend on the guidance and guardianship of their shepherd to keep them safe, to keep an eye out and a protective hand outstretched. Sheep trust their shepherd will call them back from danger, and lead them back home. Likewise as the good shepherd Jesus' voice is familiar and comforting to those who follow him. Under his care no less than eternal life is the miraculous gift bestowed upon his sheep.

The establishment doesn't recognize the sound of Jesus' voice. They don't hear it as their messiah/master's call to them. Looking and listening for a military messiah, a "Judas-the-Hammer" warrior to deliver them from Roman rule, these Hebrews aren't tuned to the right frequency to hear Jesus' message. A "suffering servant" messiah was such a foreign idea to them, such an outlandish notion, that despite all they had witnessed with their own eyes . . . despite all they had heard with their own ears . . .they were deaf to Jesus' message, they were blind to Jesus' identity.

Did you know that there are two different ways you can miss those amazingly instantaneous e-mail messages that come your way? The most obvious, of course, is to never log-on. As long as you don't sign on to your e-mail account, it doesn't matter how many messages you receive, you will never read them, you will never even know they are there. If you don't "click in" you'll never hear that affirming proclamation: "You've Got Mail."

Turn to someone around you and say: "You've Got Mail."

The other way you can miss e-mail messages is to ignore the call of your mailbox when you are logged on-line. Venture out of town for a few days without computer access and what happens? The mailbox just keeps getting fuller and fuller as more mail arrives. Eventually, however, the electronic space allocated for your mail box will reach its capacity--for AOL customers its 1000 messages. After that any new e-mail messages coming your way simple aren't delivered and they are jettisoned back into cyberspace. If you choose never to respond to the "you've got mail" directive, eventually you WON'T get any more mail. The messages will stop coming and your electronic mail box will become dead space.

Turn to someone else around you and say, "You've Got Mail."

God keeps after us, day after day, always there, always sending us messages to keep in touch. We can choose to "listen up." Or, we can tune God out and click God off. There are plenty of people who never bother to "log on" to their spiritual self. They skate across the surface of life, never looking into the depths, never listening for what might be out of plain sight.

Others might have "logged-on" once upon a time--perhaps dragged into church Sunday after Sunday by a parent, or through a one-time experience at a Bible Camp or retreat weekend with friends. Whatever the conditions, that experience established a spiritual "mail box"--a box whose address God never forgets.

We have a God who never "closes out the account." But if you ignore God's messages, if you refuse to acknowledge the sound of God's voice every day, if you don't click in to God's Spirit in every situation, eventually the messages will fly right over your head. When the promptings of the heart and soul are stilled, we no longer even listen for the sound of God's presence.

Are you tuning in to the Spirit's ongoing prayer melody? How is this "tuning" best done for you?

One thing you can always count on in computer culture . . . the moment you master some facet of it, the technology will advance and leave you outmoded and out-to-lunch.

E-mail is actually now quaint and old-fashioned. Many of our kids don't bother with e-mail, its tedious lists of messages sent and messages received. E-mail is too slow, too clumsy, and time consuming. Instead instant-messaging (IM) is how savvy computer communicators talk to each other. No written records are filed away, but while you are on-line, doing some other work, a box suddenly appears on-screen announcing the incoming message. Click on it and you're instantly engaged in dialogue with the message-sender, talking back and forth, like a boundary-less "chat room."

"Instant messaging" is the kind of access we have always had available to us from God. Sometimes unexpected, sometimes much anticipated, God's love reaches out across the universe to envelop us, fulfill us, provide for us.

Thomas Merton put it like this: "Life is simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time." (As quoted by Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith [San Francisco: HarperSanFran, 1997], 47.)

Turn to someone you don't know and say: "You've Got Mail."