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I remember growing up in Sunday School and then in Youth Group and having time set aside to pray. We would always go around the room and ask if anyone had any prayer requests – any praises – and them write them on this strangel slate device called a chalkboard. This is a strange and foreign device for some folks today – but it was a valuable tool to retain information with.
As the names were typed on the chalkboard, we were able to get a mental/visual association with the person or event we needed to pray for. It made it a little easier to recall those names later on during my quiet time or allowed me the time to write them down to pay for it later.
Now, here is the mindboggling part of this whole issue – the invention and how we came to use it. eNotes.com gives us insight as to how the chalkboard came to be:
The origins of the chalkboard date back to the early decades of the 19th century. The forerunner of the chalkboard was the small, paddle-shaped hornbook. This item had been in use in schools of medieval England, and by the time of the Revolutionary War era in colonial America, it was carried by legions of students. The hornbook was a strip of wood with a piece of paper fastened onto it. On the paper were a variety of learning aids in small print. A typical hornbook would carry both the Lord’s Prayer and the alphabet, and a translucent sheet of animal horn covered the paper. The hornbooks were small objects, sometimes with a hole at the bottom so they could be tied on a string and worn about the neck.
Eventually the hornbook evolved into the reading board. This was a strip of about 15 inches (38 cm) in length, also containing the alphabet and other learning aids, that was hung at the front of the late 18th-century classroom. From the reading board came the concept of one general chalkboard for all students in the classroom to both view and use.
It takes a bit of a process to make the chalkboard – yet God created the ultimate design to create each and every material that a chalkboard is made from. Don’t think He didn’t know that the “hornboard” would be used to teach his Commandments to students in the 19th century and that the chalkboard would be used to learn lessons of His Word and prayer requests in my time.
Fast forward to 2009 – and Web 2.0 . Last night, I decided to do a life blogging event with no agenda other than “lets get together and prayer for whatever needs praying for and to praise God for whatever praises we had.” There wasn’t a lot of advance planning for this. I just made a post on twitter and on facebook stating what I was going to do – and did it. Now, grant it, while there were 52 folks who came into the room to observe – there were only 7 folks who actually participated. The point is that there were 7 folks who otherwise would have had other things to do other than take a few moments to pray for needs not of their own – and 52 folks who took time to either silently reflect or were just curious.
The simple truth of the matter is that God is current. God knew that Web 2.0 would exist long before Al Gore did (sorry…couldn’t resist) – the same way He knew the benefit of a chalkboard. If God can use inanimate items and technological tools – image how much He can use a living-breathing being like you?
