the Week of Proper 28 / Ordinary 33
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Daily Devotionals
Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life
We have reached a time in our society where old is not so much an age issue as it is a technology issue. Granted people still celebrate birthdays which means that each year a person is getting older. However, their aging factor is compared against that of the technology around them. Let me use myself to illustrate. This year I will be fifty-six years old. In some places I am considered a Senior Citizen. In others I am still almost a decade away from being able to merit "the breaks" of advancing age. I rub elbows with people twenty and even thirty years my senior who wish they had my youth.
What I can remember is what makes me old. Yeah, there are the nuts and bolts things like being old enough to remember Jack Nicklaus as a rookie golfer, Jim Brown as rookie running back and Mickey Mantle as a rookie center fielder. I remember the DeSoto, the Edsel and twenty cents a gallon gasoline, and the station attendants came out and pumped it for you as well as checked under the hood. I remember nickel Cokes and taking fifty cents to the theater and having ten cents left after a ticket, soft drink and popcorn.
But there are other things I remember. I remember rotary phones that came only in black and had short phone cords, from the base unit to the handset, that were actually covered in fabric in order to be flexible. I remember my uncle's ham radio and the fun we got from hearing things from all over the world when the conditions were right. I remember television...at my uncle's house. We couldn't afford one at that time. We were doing good to have phone service.
About those televisions. They were big and deep units but they had small screens. When you turned the tv on it took time to warm up and the picture on that small screen would then kind of unfold for you. Then when you turned it off the picture went from full screen to a tiny spot in the middle of the screen before finally going away. You got reception by what was known as a "Lazy X" antenna, if you want to call three channels reception. If you wanted to complain about the programming you used what is call the U. S. Postal Service and sent a letter for five cents that you typed on a typewriter to the station. There were no P. C.'s so there was no internet. Al Gore had barely been invented by this time.
Today our phones are mostly unencumbered by wires in our homes. We even have phones that we carry with us wherever we go. Instead of ham radios to contact the world we have the world right at our fingertips through the internet. P. C.'s have replaced typewriters and even libraries. Televisions now come on through remote control and most don't even have channels to select on the cabinet. There are almost innumerable stations to receive either through cable or satellite. Know what? With all that technology there is one thing that has not changed. "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6 The only way to heaven is still through Jesus.
'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' Copyright 2010 © Tom Kelley. 'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' articles may be reproduced in whole under the following provisions: 1) A proper credit must be given to the author at the end of each story, along with their complete bio and a link to https://www.studylight.org/ 2) 'Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life' content may not be arranged or "mirrored" as a competitive online service.
