Just before midnight, I received a text that requires me to handle something today. It’s not that I’m stressed about the requirement, only, we have reached this point of living where we are, or can be, in constant contact with the world. Technology rules our lives.
I wonder what it was like back then?!!? What will it be like in the Future?
Remember When?
Of course, you don’t. Especially if you are much younger than I. Long before the Internet, or when computers ruled our daily life, we were clueless. Before phone lines controlled our lives, we waited for the postman to arrive. Before then? Word of mouth. Go back far enough? Well. You get the picture.
Kids born in this Millenium only know what it’s like to be in touch with the entire world with that magical device they hold in their hands.
I remember when Kindle became the way to read an electronic book. In the middle of nowhere, driving on vacation, my bride could use her Kindle reader, buy and download a book, without having to leave the trip. My first mobile phone was a “bag” phone. Calls were $1.35 per minute during the daytime and somewhat cheaper off hours. I could not imagine living in a wireless world (in its infancy you did not trust the concept) and purchased a second phone line for the fax and AOL connected computer.
Back in the day we played with Tin Can’s and String to mimic the landed phone lines of the day, but we dreamed of the time when that fancy-schmancy Dick Tracy watch would be the real thing!
The Control Factor
Somewhere along the way we’ve allowed technology (including social platforms) to control how we live, respond, and follow the world around us. We’ve lost the flavor of only learning something new. Back then? We trekked to the library, learned how to use the card catalog, and prayed someone else hadn’t checked out the resource we need for a term paper! We wrote everything out long-hand or maybe had an old manual typewriter with a special eraser to remove mistakes – then came along the IBM Selectric and Liquid Paper!
Our automobiles may have over 100 CPU’s (Control Processing Unit’s – the brain of any computer), and with them, we drive with more comfort and control than we ever thought possible. Someday, the car will drive us and we will lose the feel of the road, and the whim of a direction, because wandering down the back roads will no longer fit into a lifestyle.
The Future
As the planet groans with a load of humanity, we will someday live in cubicles stacked above and below ground. (Caves of Steel) Gone are the wide-open spaces where globe trekkers once roamed freely.
The future is a fearful place and time.
Technology will control everything. Skynet… hmmm… could it be a snapshot of the future? Soylent Green. Another true story? We will need to be corralled and controlled. THX 1138. No more enjoying remote places, nor will we be required to travel for shopping purposes – everything will come to us.
But wait, could it all come crashing down to an end as the dystopian thinks? Alas, Babylon! Will the last of humanity exist On The Beach? Will Lucifer’s Hammer really strike?
As the world crashes and burns, there is one place I want to turn to, and I believe it to be the only way to escape.
Here’s My Thought Today
Everything in the social, political and environmental world seems to be fraught with negative. Immigration and migration swarm our lives with too many for one person or nation to handle. Health care becomes a prohibitive scary financial place. Slowly but surely technology will rule the world!
Many want the idyllic days of the past when back yard fences were as far as you went to learn the news – most of it was probably gossip. Still, you can hardly look at anything via technology and find the good news that the Gospels tell us about.
Still, there are words of life that go further back in time, and give me my Judeo-Christian foundation. The Bible. If you read history very much, then you will realize that good times come and go, and bad times rears its ugly head. As with the game, “Whack a Mole” we try to pound away the bad, and create good.
Good Times, Bad Times, The Ending
Even back in the days of Jesus’ ministry, he forewarned of a future where it would be scary and negative. In Matthew 24, he pulls from the past prophecies and events and points our attention to the future. He lays out what our lives should be like, and then in Matthew 25, he describes the last days and teaches us to watch and be ready.
Paul continues the teaching in various letters, but he gives us a warning of how our lives should be lived. It’s just 11 verses, but will you read and consider? (Emphasis mine)
But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.
But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.
For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.
Therefore comfort each other and edify one another,
just as you also are doing.
(1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 NKJV)
Think It Through
Jesus tells us how to live in bad times. So does Paul. We can either join the melee, or we can pull ourselves out of the morass and focus on living lives full of faith, love, and hope. It’s not just what we know, but it is also what we should be doing!
This was Paul’s message everywhere. We also know it as the summation of the “Love Chapter” which he is so famous for.
And now abide faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13:13 NKJV)