In A Galaxy Far, Far Away....Or Not ---Inktober 12 #remote

When I was working for a homebuilders' magazine way back in the late 1970s, I had an hour and a half commute each way from my apartment in the suburbs to my office cubicle in downtown Chicago. I walked a mile to the bus stop, rode the bus, caught the train, and then trekked another mile across town to the office.

I wrote most of the day not on a screen, but paper scrolled into an electric typewriter.  And then, at the end of the day, I slipped back into my walking shoes (or boots) and reversed my course.

One day I asked my boss, if I could work at home a day or two a week, to get the copy done.  "You want to do what?" he asked incredulously. "In what galaxy do you think people would work from home?"

Needless to say, the term remote working would not enter our vocabulary for many decades later.  I continued to commute.

And then, everything changed radically.  We moved from Chicago to small town Jackson, Tennessee in the early '80s.  The magazine still needed me to write on assignment. And we discovered not if I could write from home, but how.  Federal Express was in its infancy.  As long as I got my floppy disk to the small airport by 8 pm, Fed Ex would deliver my copy to the office by 10 am the next morning.  Imagine that!  And then another decade down the road, the internet anchored my freelancing while we raised four daughters, in several more remote locations.

Remote working, remote learning, TV remotes (no, we didn't have one of those either), and now since covid, even remote tele-doctor appointments.

But there is one thing not remote, never has been, and never will be.

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?"  Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?"  But the Word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.     Deuteronomy  30. 11-14

God is not remote.  He has given us His Word on that.