Living in the Age of Change

The pastor in the church where I grew up had charge of that church for 50 years.  Remarkable!  He came to the church in 1916 and retired in 1966.  At one point I realized that the men who influenced his life were alive in Abraham Lincoln's day.  He was schooled in the days of oratory and was quite offended by any suggestion that he should ever need to use a microphone.  For some reason I was always fascinated with the lives that my elders had lived.  I grew up close to my grandparents and loved it when I could get them talking about what they had experienced in the 20's & 30's. 

But I was growing up in the 60's & 70's and was just as fascinated with developing technology as I was with the past.   I remember becoming gradually amazed at the nature and pace of technological change.  I think because my relationships had given me deep roots in the past, I could see the change not just from my perspective, but from theirs, and thereby appreciate how profoundly it was affecting individuals as well as culture as a whole.  

When I read Future Shock in 1971, I think it dawned on me what I was in for.   When we're young, we feel like we own the change and look somewhat pityingly upon the archaics who are struggling to adapt.  My own dad, for example, refused to ever look at a computer, as much as we tried to warm him up to the idea.   Like having one leg on the dock & the other in the canoe, I began to realize that this great technological divide was going to continue in an accelerating way, and at some point would dislodge me from its accepting embrace as well.

Now I watch my kids enter a world where they will never know what it means NOT to have computers, Internet, Wi-Fi, filmless cameras, cell phones, IM and on and on.  And I'm no technophobe.  I am fascinated by technological development.   But I am also attached to something that felt much more REAL in the past.  To this point I've been amazed that I've been able to continue to stretch between the canoe and the dock, rejecting only a few techy gifts like IM & Facebook.  At some point I may reach the splitting point and go out in a splash as fish bait, but until then I intend to watch and understand 'what God is wroughting' * in this most amazing period of history in which I've been granted to live.

*  On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sends the telegraph message "What hath God wrought?" from the Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., to the B & O Railroad Depot in Baltimore, Maryland.  (from Numbers 23:23)    link