2015! Twenty fifteen sounds like the title of a sci-fi movie. Sometimes I feel like I am living in the middle of such an epoch. Every day, advances in technology expand way beyond my understanding. On some days I shun the newest and latest gadget simply because I cannot allow one more thing to direct my day from some unseen cloud. (My e-mails keep asking if I want to connect with the cloud. I keep telling it to leave me alone; I just want to stay here on earth.)
I rejoice when I can send a message to friends in Kenya and get a response in a few minutes. Such communication used to take months. I like writing an article for Indian Life when I can delete a thought with a keystroke and move a paragraph from the bottom to the top without rewriting or retyping the whole document. I like plugging in my GPS and following the voice through an unknown neighborhood. I don’t appreciate the “voice” getting snippy with me when she has to recalculate.
I often wonder where all of this leads however.
I catch myself getting impatient when a flight is delayed and my trip takes ten long (sigh) hours to traverse the continent. My great grandparents rode horses and traveled the river to get from one place to another. It took my grandfather 13 hours in a horse and wagon to pick up supplies from a nearby town. We can do that trip today in about 20 minutes and get frustrated if we happen to get behind a slow vehicle.
I never thought I would become a texter (and I never will be able to work my thumbs like my granddaughter does) but it is quite convenient to send information without actually having to talk to someone, especially if I am in a hurry, or not particularly cheery at that moment, but it troubles me to see couples sitting together in a restaurant glued to their individual cell phones. And way too much information is “out there” for the world to see.
Speaking of “out there,” the science of astronomy really makes me feel like I have time-traveled forward a century or two. Yesterday, the TV news reported on the Kepler telescope. Its function is to discover planets outside our solar system. (I did not even know we had such a telescope.) It has discovered 1,235 extrasolar planet candidates. Of these, 68 are earth-sized; 54 are within the habitable zone (not too hot or too cold); five planets are both earth-sized and within the habitable zone. I wonder how many worlds are out there. I wonder where they are with their technology.
I also wonder what 2015 will bring us. Of one thing we can be sure: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).
Happy New Year!
© Sue Carlisle 2013. Sue Carlisle is a member of the Ponca tribe and spent much of her youth on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Her passion is to encourage people to look at creation and see our awesome Creator.
