Techno glad

We live in a special time, don't we? Some new gadget, some new tech, is released nearly every day. If you can't afford to buy something today, wait 24 hours and an improved gadget will take its place. Stand in line for hours on end to get something that will be out of date in three months is not the best policy as far as I can tell.

Did you know they check the oxygen in your lungs (body, etc.) by putting a device on your index finger? A little plastic device, snuggly placed on my finger, told every nurse that I was pumping oxygen at a 93-96 percent level. On my FINGER. I never got, nor apparently will ever get, to 100 percent. I didn't ask but I reasoned that if I came in at my normal (by school standards) 86-89 level of testing I would be in some difficulty. So I crammed, putting the little oxygen cord in my nose for a couple hours before the time I would be checked.

Heck, it ain't putting a thermometer in front of a wall heater so we could run a temperature long enough to get out of school, but it's close. If they had given me a chance to study, I promise I would have done better. But who knew there would be oxygen testing in the first place?

Of course, this being a religion blog and all, I never wrote any of the above.

Our church now has a device on its Website that allows on-line giving. One click, and the tithe you've struggled to decide on is rocketed (somehow, someway) to somewhere that somehow puts itself into our on-line banking.

And I thought counting money was hard.

The fact we can put a robot on Mars and take it for a test drive, shooting pictures through hundreds of thousand of miles, is amazing enough. But the fact I can shoot a picture with my I-Pad and it instantly be seen on my I-Phone is stunning. I'm continually adding apps to my I-Pad not because I need them, but because I'm fascinated that they do what they do. Me? I'm working on tying shoes properly.

I remember when I couldn't figure out how to get "on" to the International Web (as I believe we called it). Now, I can't figure out how to get off it.

Makes you wonder if they could check the blood level in my sugar system by putting a thimble thingy on my big toes. Or could they enter an instantaneous introduction of caffeine into my blood with a little scratch of a device on my fingernail? Or maybe there is something like a 3-D, non-evasive strip that we could use to test for, well, anything. Maybe a Billy-ka-bob of testing, without pain, of course, where like the old litmus tests we simply place a strip on our arm and it tells us everything you could ever possibly want to know about the subject... age, oxygen, blood sugar, religious denominations, political parties voted for, hairline possibilities in 20 years.

And all that makes me wonder, what on earth did we do before technology kicked in, and kicked simple thinking out? Remember when you had to wring out clothes manually? Or get up and switch among the three channels the TV received? Or having to stop the car, pull out the map, fold it flat somehow and find where you actually were?

Remember when there as no app for that?

It's like that new television show Revolution. The power went off 15 years earlier on this show, so everything (I mean everything) stopped immediately. No lights. No cars. No phones. No computers. Not even a little mouse running on a treadmill so that we could send a text. Heck, remember when text wasn't a verb?

And wouldn't that be odd ... we finally find a cure for texting while driving, and we can't text at all? Everyone is walking, yet they're never out of breath of tired. Guns are outlawed, at least for the public, but apparently you can pick up a sharp sword on every corner in the new world. And why aren't the Amish in charge of everything, with their experience and all.

But I digress.

On last night's The Walking Dead, the heroes of the television show came across a group of men who had been prisoners since whatever happened to all the dead folks to turn them into zombies. The prionsers didn't know aht the world was like. The heroes began to describe a terrible, terrible state of the world. They said there was no world really, no computers, no cars, no anything. The look on these men's faces as each thing lost was mentioned was priceless. NO COMPUTERS? The look was devastated.

But the fact there were people, dead people, wandering around with one goal, to EAT YOUR FACE, didn't seem to faze them. "NO COMPUTERS? Wait, I don't think I can take this. DEAD WALKING FOLKS, well, we can handle that."

Yesterday morning I left the house with stabs of light slicing the cloud cover to the east of Eunice. The tepid morning temperatures were affected by the heavy humid air. I thought, as Mary and I drove to our first church service, of those times Jesus talked about the end.

He said, "immediately after the distress of those days, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give up its light; the stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken."

He said, "at that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn."

He said, "They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. He will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other."

As I drove, thinking over my sermon on Hope Matters, I watched the thick, living clouds ,bouncing againt each other like some of those little white mice in a maze, and I thought about what it would mean if Jesus came right then. I mean right THEN. Just parted those gray-white-blue clouds and peeked in with a smile the size of Kansas.

It would mean ...
No more tests for oxygen levels;
no more tech or tech folks or Silicon Vally running our lives;
no more apocalyptic televison shows. No televison, no more "future."

Only Jesus. Everything would be about Jesus. The elect gathered from the four winds. A great, great gathering of fried-chicken eating believers. Imagination no longer needed, no longer required. Wouldn't have to imagine what it would be like to have his face be before us, because, well, his face would be before us.

Surrounded by glory unlike any we've ever seen, felt, known.

"As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man."

Which would mean Windows 8 and Surface and Facebook, and Google, and  the mini-Ipad and IPhone 5 and you name it would be for naught. The lights would go out, because the light has come back.

 When that day comes, when we're staring at the sky as he hovers (I don't worry about explaining it, I just read it then pass it along), then gently beckons us to join him in the sky (where I'm assured my fear of heights will no longer be a drawback), we will shout, sing, tearfully cry "HALLELUJAH."

We won't need Photoshop, or IOS 6, or Microsoft office or Toshiba, Samyo, or Sony. All the Apples in the world will be fruit on a tree. We won't need anything because the All and All will have arrived.

Plenty of technoclads would need to have their oxygen levels checked.

 We won't need flashlights, because he will light up the new Jerusalem. We won't need guns because there will be no wars. We won't need tissue because we won't have colds, or tears, or dirty faces.

The world will have changed in an instant. So, will we have any need of oxygen on the Day of the Lord? Doctors will be out of jobs. Nurses will be without careers. Heck, morticians will be dead in the water.

My advice: If those clouds part, and the Son of Man appears in the sky, take a deep, deep breath and let go of the last one you will ever need. Put the wine into new wineskins, cool the heat of Hell, and let Him take you away.