Is it just me, or are adverts becoming more annoying? Not necessarily the ones on TV, but the ones that intrude on our daily routines.
I just had a panic online when a pop-up advert I was not expecting popped up and told me there was a problem that needed fixing. I know enough not to click on them, but getting rid of them by clicking on the ‘x’ always fills me with dread in case someone has changed things around and it actually means ‘accept’ rather than ‘go away’. It led me to post a warning on Facebook, just in case, until I had checked it out and been assured that it was not a genuine problem.
I have discovered that sometimes adverts appear at the bottom of bloggages here. I have to say that I have no control over them and am not endorsing any of them, I am not sponsored by any of them and I get no revenue from any of them.
There are adverts all over Facebook. They may or may not be genuine, but I am not going to click on them, just in case.
And don’t get me started on the spam emails offering me… ahem, you know… or telling me that someone I have never met wants to give me millions of pounds, or that I have won lotteries that I have not entered.
Then there is the amount of junk that gets lobbed through our letterboxes every day. It must be about a tree a week that is paying the price for us being told that our (rented) house is valuable and estate agents would like to
sell it for us, that someone who can only afford a cheaply photocopied piece of paper is qualified to come and clean our carpets, that there is takeaway food available, and so on…
And now they are knocking on our doors trying to get us to sign up for charities, change our electricity suppliers and buy double glazing (don’t they ever check the windows before they knock?).
This is not so much a grumpy old man whinge as an observation. Don’t these people realise that they are annoying us? Don’t they realise that the more they annoy us the less likely we are to respond to their adverts?
I hope and pray that churches never fall into that trap. It seems to me that Jehovah’s Witnesses are close with their persistent campaign of door-knocking that has now become such a cliche that it is almost comical. It seems to me that people who stand on street corners haranguing passers-by with quotes from the Bible and telling them that they should turn or burn are in the same league.
I’m not suggesting that we should keep quiet, or that we should not be sharing the most amazing news the planet has ever had. Far from it. But please let’s think about whether we are going to be more annoying that a blessing. I doubt that many people have been irritated into the Kingdom of God!
Which list of words seems more attractive to you:
Love, service, friendship, blessing, support, encouragement, peace, prayer, generous
Sin, death, hell, shouting, cold calling, interrupting, uninvited
Be blessed, be a blessing.
Responding to an advert:
A large, well established, Canadian lumber camp advertised that they were looking for a good lumberjack. The very next day, a skinny little man showed up at the camp with his axe, and knocked on the head lumberjacks’ door.
The head lumberjack took one look at the little man and told him to leave. “Just give me a chance to show you what I can do,” said the skinny man.
“Okay, see that giant redwood over there?” said the lumberjack. “Take your axe and go cut it down.”
The skinny man headed for the tree, and in five minutes he was back knocking on the lumberjack’s door.
“I cut the tree down,” said the man. The lumberjack couldn’t believe his eyes and said, “Where did you get the skill to chop down trees like that?”
“In the Sahara Forest,” replied the puny man.
“You mean the Sahara Desert,” said the lumberjack.
The little man laughed and answered back, “Oh sure, that’s what they call it now!”
Like this:
Like Loading...