Here it is, 2025, and we’ve been using it for a number of years. But do we know what it means? SMS. It’s been with us since December 3, 1992. Now, we have MMS. Do we know what that means?
SMS stands for Short Message/Messaging Service. It is the message component of our mobile devices that allows us to send a text message to another mobile device or computer. “Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, used a personal computer to send the text message “Merry Christmas” via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.”1 An SMS message is limited to 160 characters. That might not sound like a lot. To get an idea what that would look like, it is 10 more characters than the opening paragraph.
In March 2002, MMS – Multimedia Messaging Service – was introduced as an upgrade to SMS. With a smartphone, you can send 1600 characters as well as “forty seconds of video, one image, a slideshow of multiple images, or audio.”2 What does that look like? By the time you finish reading this sentence, there are only 872 characters in use or 1078 counting all the spaces.
Brevity is the name of the game.
I never thought I would like texting, but I absolutely love it. It is brief, to the point, short and sweet. I feel like I can multitask several different things while texting. If I can’t respond immediately, I can answer the text as soon as I’m free.
There is an advantage to texting and brevity. When talking to someone on the phone, to get from point A to point B of the conversation, they can take the long way around the barn! Lots of unnecessary information is given, thoughts can be disorganized, and it might take a lot of time to get to the point of the call. What could have been said in a minute takes an hour! Just the opposite is true of texting. You tend to get to the point quickly, making the shortest distance between points A and B a straight line.
I could make many points of application in this devotional, but I’ll just make one, keeping it between SMS and MMS length. [John 21:25 says, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.”
Think about that! Jesus reduced all that He could have written down to a “text” message – the entire text of the Old and New Testaments. Volumes of books that the world could not contain vs. one book, the Bible. Is this some sort of Scriptural hyperbole? I don’t
think so. The infinite wisdom and knowledge of God is in view. We will have eternity to pick the mind of God, and it will take eternity to learn about Him.
To think that God reduced the volumes of what He could have said to one Book containing a mere 788,258 words is phenomenal. This is great motivation for us to scale down what we say and to carefully think through the necessity of each word. Remember that the more we speak, the more in danger we are of sin. May we weigh each of our words carefully.]
Just to show you that it can be done, there are 799 characters between the brackets. 😊
Proverbs 10:19 warns, “In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise.”
1https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/december-3/first-sms-text-message-sent
Images are taken from https://pixabay.com/, https://www.pexels.com/, or https://unsplash.com/images or created in Windows Copilot. According to the websites, they are Royalty Free and free to be used for our purposes.
2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service
