When I was radio active…

I had a radio show once. I had taken a job as the music and youth director at a church in Junction, Texas. When I learned that the manager of the local radio station was a member of the church, I pitched him the idea of having a weekly show featuring the relatively-new-at-the-time genre of contemporary Christian music. The station’s format was already fairly eclectic. Mornings featured all country music. At noon there was an hour of local news, announcements, and want ads. More country music followed until 6:00pm when a young guy would come in and play heavy metal. This smorgasbord was broadcast on a whopping 1000 watts in the daytime; at sunset, the power was reduced to 250 watts. At the time, I had a hair dryer which pulled twelve hundred watts, several times as powerful as my evening broadcasts.
When my show was on, I was the only person at the station. While records played, I had time to explore a room in the station which was filled with shelves of 45s. Hundreds of tiny record companies issued singles, sending copies to radio stations in hope of getting a hit. I found records with political themes, records on colored vinyl of all shades, tributes to Elvis and other deceased celebrities. There were records I had to listen to just because of the title, like “Horror Asparagus Stories” by a group called The Driving Stupid. It was awful.
It’s like the old “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it” problem; if you make a record and it never gets played…did you really make a record? And if your radio show is only reaching a few blocks and nobody ever calls…is it worth doing? If your prayer is never answered, does that mean nobody is listening? If your testimony never influences anyone else, was it wasted?
Well, according to what I’ve read, my 250-watt radio waves are still traveling out there somewhere. Perhaps I’m a big hit on Alpha Centauri. Perhaps not. But faith is the evidence of things you can’t see. I’m not on the radio anymore. But I’m still broadcasting every day that I live.
And occasionally somebody tunes in. Thanks for listening.