2020 Snuck Up On Me…

The headline jarred me: “The NBA All-Decade Team.”  I’m not a big NBA fan; it was the “All-Decade” part that threw me.  Somehow my brain had not absorbed we were marking the end of a decade.  I knew we were changing from 2019 to 2020, but it doesn’t seem like ten years have passed.

I think my confusion is justified.  When I was little, I watched a cartoon called The Jetsons.  According to that cartoon, by 2020 we’d all be living in the clouds, have flying cars, and robot maids.  Roombas do not count as maids.  In 1965 James Bond had his own jetpack.  I’m still waiting for mine.  I pretty sure 1965 was the same year Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty.  That war has lasted a long time. 

Growing up in the sixties, science had all the answers.  After all, science and engineering put a man on the moon.  We were told by 2020 disease would be wiped out and people would be living on Mars.  Only in the movies. 

We’ve made some progress.  When I tell my children about writing a computer program for a college class and having to use punch cards, they ask, “What’s a punch card?”  Computers were the size of cars and had reels of tape.  My first computer was portable; it weighed thirty-four pounds.  The last computer I bought weighs three pounds.  It is easier to carry.

I got my first cell phone in 1994.  The church had a business meeting to decide if I needed one.  My cell phone was the size of a shaving kit, stuffed.  I marveled that I could drive and talk on the phone at the same time.  Who knew in 2020 we’d be saying, “Hold on just a minute, I want to take a picture” and then whip out our phones?

Not all progress is good.  When I grew up, supper was home cooked every night because fast food only applied to something running faster than you could shoot.  Mama used to make cat-head biscuits (if you don’t know what a cat-head biscuit is, ask your grandpa).  All the biscuits in our house now come in tubes labeled “Pillsbury.”  My Aunt Neta used to make the best chicken and dumplings you ever tasted.  She had no recipe.  When a granddaughter asked her how she made them, her directions started with, “Go out to the chicken coop and grab a hen…”  “Fresh” had a different meaning back then.

Church has changed too.  We didn’t need microphones for the preacher in those days.  Preachers of the Baptist flavor preached at the decibel level of a jet engine.  Even Methodist preachers of that era thundered like a Peterbilt diesel cranking on a cold morning.  Now we have a “Sound Man” and even the smallest churches must have a screen and a video projector.  Imagine how effective Jesus would have been if he’d had PowerPoint. 

When I started as a pastor, if someone was having surgery, we’d have special prayer.  I’d be there to pray before the surgery, stay through the surgery, and hear the Doctor’s report of the surgery.  Surgery was touch and go in those days.  Recently a member of my church had a heart attack; he was airlifted to Columbia, had three stents put in, and came home the next day with a scar on his wrist (I’m still trying to figure why working on your heart means you have a scar on your wrist).  I asked him why he didn’t call me.  He said, “I didn’t want to bother you, it was minor.”

Revivals were two-week meetings when the lost were saved, the saved were stirred, and the preacher got a break.  Vacation Bible School lasted two weeks as well.  When I was a young pastor and suggested we cut VBS to one-week, you’d have thought I suggested devil worship.  We not only had church Sunday morning, we went Sunday night too.  Now revivals have just about died out, VBS is down to four nights, and Sunday services are fading fast.

Music changed too.  I still remember the first time I heard a guitar in church; I thought it was a sign of the Apocalypse.  When we decided to use drums in worship at the church I serve, we sat them on stage for a month before we ever played them.  Today, thought, there are young people who think you can’t worship the Lord if the fog machine is broken.

A new decade is coming, unless, of course, Jesus comes first.  Whatever your expectations are about the future, they are probably wrong.  Instead of trying to predict what will change, maybe you should focus on the One who does not change.  There is an old gospel song that says it well, “I know not what the future holds, but I know who holds the future.”

Welcome, 2020.  The God who led me through The Jetsons, the moon shoot, Richard Nixon, disco, Jimmy Carter, Reganomics, “No new taxes,” the saga of Bill and Hillary, 9-11, Obamacare, and Trump tweets leads me still.  He not only holds the future, he holds me too.

One Hundred Years Ago…

One hundred years ago, January 2, 1919, my Dad was born. 

Think about it.  Woodrow Wilson was still President.  The War to End All Wars was over.  Though automobiles were becoming widespread, his parents still drove a horse and buggy to church.  There was a muddy wagon trail that went to Wauchula one way and to Avon Park the other. 

My father’s father was a rancher, a farmer, a citrus grower, and a preacher.  He either drove his buggy to his country churches or took the train from Avon Park.  There was no electricity in his house (and wouldn’t be until my Dad was an adult).  There was no tractor.  There were no fences, only open range.  You rounded up cattle and sorted them out in the pens, or you roped a calf and branded it in the pasture.  It took a lot of saddle time to be a cattleman in those days.          

Somehow, I never discovered if my father was born at home or if he was born in town.  I imagine he was born at home.  Ten miles of bumpy dirt roads in a buggy would result in a fast delivery.

In his short forty-two years, my father saw electricity come to ranch, as well as the first indoor bathroom.  A telephone line was put in about that same time, a party line where your neighbors could eavesdrop on your conversations. 

The family switched from horses and buggies to Model T Fords and then to Model A Fords.  They stopped driving cattle to Punta Gorda or Fort Myers to ship, and instead began to haul cattle in trucks to the local market.  The fence law was passed and every one had to fence their cattle in. The Wauchula to Avon Park road was moved north and paved.  It no longer took couple of hours to get to town; now they could reach town in about fifteen minutes.

My father saw another World War, and then a Police Action in Korea.  The Atomic Age began when he was 26.  Television made it to the ranch in the 1950’s. 

In his forty-two years, my father would be an All-State Football player, All-Around State Rodeo Champion, producer and announcer of rodeos, a Sunday School teacher, and a friend to many. 

The first Russian flew in space April 12, 1961.  Daddy would die fifteen days later, before the first American would ever go into space.  He missed the Beatles, color television, Vietnam, the mini-skirt, the moon landing, Disney World, Watergate, Reganomics, Gulf Wars I and II, “I did not have sex with that woman,” home computers, 9-11, smart phones, Google, and Netflix.  The heart attack that killed him would probably be averted now by a catherization and a few stents.   

A hundred years is not that long really, not in the long span of time.  How could so much happen so fast?

Then I think about my own life.  I came along just as the space age began and television shifted from black and white to color.  On the hundredth anniversary of my birth, will my grandchildren (hope I have some by then) be amazed that we had to drive our own cars?  Will they be shocked that we did not have in-home robots to clean, cook, and do laundry?  Will they be surprised that one great grandfather died of cancer, since they have been vaccinated at birth to prevent it? 

Will my grandchildren even understand what it means to “go to the store” since a drone from Amazon Target Mart makes daily deliveries?  Will they think the idea of cellphone is quaint since everyone is now implanted at birth with technological uplinks?  Will they be amazed that we had relative peace for sixty years, until a massive three-way war between China, Russia and India broke out and engulfed every other nation?

I think about my dad being dropped into 2019 and coming to see me preach.  What would he think about the contemporary music, the lights, me not wearing a tie on Sunday?

Then I think about my grandchildren and wonder if they will go to church at all?  Will it all church turn into an online experience?  Or will Christian faith dwindle to just a few folks who stay faithful to Jesus? 

Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, said, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come…”  This is not just a verse for people under 30.  It tells us to live each day mindful of God.  Change is constant.  God is stable.  No matter what the future holds, there is a God who holds us.  When you know you are in his hand, you are ready for whatever comes.