As Thanksgiving approaches, it is almost time to look toward
Christmas. There will be lots of things
vying for our time. But some things will always win out. For example, when our preschool
presents its Christmas program, I would dare say that it will be the most
recorded event in FUMC history!
Our phones allow us to capture remarkable amounts of data
that we assume will be around forever.
However, technology is changing so fast, will the file formats become
outdated so that they are next to unreadable?
Surely not, we say. Of course, I
still have some old cassette tapes and nothing to play them on. And if I did manage to get them transferred to
CD or DVD, my latest laptop doesn’t even have a drive on which to play them!
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Some may have trouble using
this today. They might ask,
"How does it take a picture?"
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Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963,
the National Opinion Research Center conducted a survey of citizen
reactions. They kept it on the latest
technology of that time – punch cards for the large mainframe computers. After 9/11, they wanted to conduct a similar
survey but when they went back to look at the data from 1963, they found that
there was no way to read it! They
eventually went to an outside source but their machinery was in need of
refurbishment before they could access the punch cards. Eventually, they were able to look at the
original research.
There are things that we assume will be around forever. Of course, this comes from our self-centered perspective
because we can’t imagine life changing so radically beyond what we know.
How does that relate to the word we hear from Daniel this
week? He speaks of an “everlasting
dominion that shall not pass away” in verse 14 of today’s reading. As we approach the Reign of Christ Sunday, we
interpret this dominion to be that of Jesus Christ. But just as we ascribe eternity to this
reign, churches in the United States are seeing less people active in
them. More churches are closing and most
churches will see less people attending this Sunday than they registered for the same Sunday one
year ago.
Does this movement away from church belie the statement from
Daniel? Or are we seeing the expression
of faith and spirituality change to something different?
We trust in an everlasting dominion but we must also
understand that the expression of it may change to look like something we may
not recognize. How do we incorporate
change into our faith while still maintaining what we consider crucial? I will wrestle with this question all week
and hopefully bring some insight to it on Sunday!
In Christ,
Sam
Photo by Joybot via Flickr.com. Used under the Creative Commons license.
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