SIX DEGREES

Last week for several days here it was minus six degrees centigrade outside and the same is forecast for this morning.

“Six Degrees” has a different connotation in popular thought. Yesterday, while I was waiting in the dentist office, I read a magazine article about the phenomenon called “six degrees of separation.” The concept was suggested forty years ago by Stanley Milgram, an experimental sociologist at Harvard.

The idea is that you can bridge the separation from any other person in the world by contact through only five other people, on the average. Though there is little empirical evidence, “six degrees of separation” has been popularized in books, movies, television shows, and websites. The power of networking contacts has been used for a long time in social and business circles. The “six degrees” concept has been exploited by social networking websites like Facebox, even for financial gain without the knowledge or permission of users.

It is an exciting thought that you could reach the most famous or most powerful or richest person in the world if you spread the word through the right five people.

I have an even better idea! I can contact directly the “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, and Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Not only can I make contact, but I can have a personal relationship with him.

“This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:3-5).

I am glad my separation from God has been resolved to the “nth degree!”