Thursday, December
20, 2018
“The day is coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the Lord. “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the Lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” Jeremiah 31:31-34(NLT)
In kindergarten they gave me
crayons and paper with lined spaces, big enough for a 6-year old’s lack of fine
motor skills. I could never color within
those lines, nor manage to keep my alphabet on the page. My Mom produced church bulletins on her
Underwood™ typewriter and a stencil. (If
you don’t recognize those pre-historic office tools, think “print dialogue and keyboard”).
When I packed off to seminary in
1980, the Underwood of the day was my portable electric
typewriter, complete with dual ribbon, black AND red, thank you! Half a dozen years later my Father (born in
1918) got his first computer, a Franklin – no hard drive or cloud, it ran on 5¼”
floppy discs. He upgraded two years later,
and I inherited the Franklin. But I held
on to the electric portable typewriter with the dual ribbons…just in case this
new-fangled deal was more trouble than it was worth!
As we sit here, I’m typing on a
laptop running on a lithium battery. It
has storage for everything I’ve written since 1981, home and ministry financials,
entry portals for the world’s knowledge via Google, and maybe a thousand
programs, some of which I can’t even pronounce, let-alone understand. Most of my relics are in the landfill,
including the Underwood and Franklin. I
am now my chief relic.
All that ruminating on the past
and its technology developments merely points-up a sometimes-painful reality that,
in human experience, today’s improvements become tomorrow’s expansion at the
garbage dump. We learn, we grow, we
change as we let go of the crayons of the past, and embrace (perhaps) better
ways and means.
There are caveats that go with
that last statement; over the centuries we have embraced the new
and lived to rue the day. War comes to
mind. We embrace new ways of destroying one-another
– always with flag-waving and nods towards benevolence which can only be
accomplished through bloodshed.
Not all new things are improvements;
for instance, the machines we carry around with us that instantly connect us to
the world can also isolate us from each other, as the machine becomes our new BFF[2].
Now, all that stands in opposition
to what God promises is coming. The
day is coming says Jeremiah, when you won’t need a new machine, or
a new medicine, or a new device to replace the old Underwood. The day is coming when God will, by virtue of
the New Covenant, restore His creation. That
which has been corrupted will be cleansed, and that which has been discarded
will be reclaimed.
God says he will write his ways on
our deep
inward parts, our hearts, souls, minds. This will be light years upside-down from how
we see things today. These days we see a
concentration on the physical body, its look, performance, and length of stay
on earth. When God finally brings all
under His rule, it will be the relationships that count. The bodies will be new, certainly, but the
emphasis is on the lack of what the body carries now – pain, tears, sorrow,
heaviness, craving that which harmful.
In its place will be joy, unspeakable joy – that which only complete,
unhindered fellowship with our Creator can bring. The relics of hatred, anger, violence and
deception will be destroyed; shalom, the peace of God will endure! Think of what you read in Genesis:
Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame. Genesis 2:25(NLT)
This is
the same couple that talked freely with God and heard God clearly. This is the restoration of Revelation, where
God says:
“Look, I am making everything new!” Revelation 21:5a(NLT)
Our current life is a training
ground for letting go of the relics and embracing the new. For now, we get to play with technological
advances, new toys, cars, computers, exploring our little galaxy…but then, at
the time when God chooses, we will let it all go. And in its place…an eternity of the best.
For You Today
Do you have any relics for the landfill?
Go to VIDEO
[2] Screen
shorthand for Best
Friend
Forever
(in case you’re reading this centuries after screens have disappeared)
No comments:
Post a Comment