“A
pleasant vineyard: sing about it!”
--
Isaiah 27:2
So this
month I turn 50, which doesn’t seem right.
50 once seemed like a big number of years, just like 50 dollars once
seemed like a lot of money. But
somewhere on the way to 50 years of living, all that changes. In my younger days it was said that the
average American male lived to be 65 years old.
Today it’s near 76. Either way,
I’m less than a long-term mortgage away.
Kinda makes you look back at your life and simultaneously wonder what
else could be coming along the road in the years of living you have left.
The 2015
we all live in would have surprised the younger me in many ways. The younger me
would be amazed at the infectious spread of strip malls, big box stores and
superstores like WalMart.
Spending hours
in the library after school in sixth grade, how could I have guessed that all
the books and encyclopedias in the reference room would one day be surpassed by
something called the Internet – which anyone could access through something
called a laptop, or carry in their pocket on something called a smart phone?
Many
things I expected to have happened by now never did.
We don’t have a national network of high
speed rail, or fleets of Concorde planes, much less astro-cruises to the
asteroid belt.
We still have brutal
wars, but at least they’re not nuclear.
We still have hunger and disease though life expectancy continues to
increase.
Going by predictions from my
childhood, I’d have expected that by now we’d all be living in underground
houses powered by clean solar energy.
The furniture in the model “house of the future” I visited long ago looked
like the stuff you’d buy today for the kids’ room at Rooms 2 Go.
And you never could have convinced my 11-year
old self watching the movie Star Wars for the first time that the most eagerly
anticipated movie in the year I turned 50 would be the latest sequel to that
same movie.
I’m not
sure anyone could have foreseen the way technology has become so intertwined
with every aspect of our lives.
And who
could have predicted the frustration of instantly obsolete electronics?
We pay big money for items and services that
do amazing things, but are designed by companies that know how to get us hooked
and keep making money off of us.
The latest
and greatest hardware becomes junk in a few years when it can no longer run the
new software.
Services we once had for
free suddenly upgrade and start charging us. There was a day my kids will never
know when we got our television channels from the airwaves, not cable or
satellite… for free!
And look
how communication has changed.
People
can watch our church services live on the web.
Heading to the store, I can text my wife on the way out the door and by
the time I get there I have a list of groceries to pick up.
Social media makes it fun to share personal
information.
We feel like celebrities starring
in our own tv show, at the same time getting instantly fed the latest gossip.
More than that, it feeds our real human
desire to connect with other people.
We
can know when someone we care about is in the hospital as soon as they go in,
and be praying for them right away.
When I
was in high school, we were required to read 1984 by George Orwell.
In this book, Orwell depicted a grim world with
everyone under surveillance.
We talked
about it in terms of what the Soviets were doing, never imagining we’d be doing
it to ourselves.
The amount of
information that can be collected about us today is staggering.
There was a day when the thought of handing
over all your receipts, photos, copies of all your messages and recordings of
all your phone calls was unimaginable. Now we assume that someone somewhere is
collecting all that data.
Who could have
imagined the day when everyone would be carrying around a tracking device that
could reveal their position at all times?
Today we happily carry our cell phones with us, along with their
built-in GPS locators.
Do we feel safer
and more secure with all this technology, or more and more lost in a world that
is slipping beyond our comprehension?
It’s fun
to imagine the future, but a spiritual perspective is needed if the world is
really going to become a better place.
Technology and change are not necessarily good or bad in and of
themselves.
What matters more is how
these things are used, and how they are made available.
The Bible gives us a vision of a just world
and shows us how we fall short.
Time and
time again, humanity has been like a vineyard well cared-for by God, but
yielding sour grapes (Isaiah 5).
Until
the day Christ returns there will always be outrageous evil in the world and in
our selves.
But in my 50 years I have
seen outrageous good triumph in numerous ways.
The Spirit of Jesus is at work in the loving and forgiving done in his
name.
The triumph of Easter is revealed
in the healing that takes place every day as people come together with the good
news of a God whose love is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Any sour
grapes left over from our past are not what God keeps in his heart.
When God speaks of that beloved vineyard
later on in Isaiah, he says,
“I the
Lord am its keeper; every moment I water it.
I guard
it night and day, so that no one can harm it; I have no wrath.” (Isaiah 27:3-4)
God’s never giving up on us.
He has placed us in this vineyard of the
Church to help us invite others into the vineyard of our lives.
After 50
years I’m more sure than ever that what the world needs most is this message we
carry that grace abounds!
Hope lives in
the sharing and giving that happens through and within the family of
faith.
A better future for each of us
and for this planet rests in the Good News of the death, resurrection, and
eternal rule of Jesus the Savior.
How
blessed I am to be turning 50 in Florida, surrounded by a congregation that
wants to roll up its sleeves and carry that message forward.
With the sweet sunshine and rains sent by
God, may our vineyard grow the luscious grapes that yield the best wine of all.
Peace,
Pastor Scott
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