Miracles in our lifetime

How did records happen? The leaps of faith and logic required seem miraculous. What made someone think they could reproduce sound by attaching a needle to a megaphone and applying it to a rotating bit of wax — and then the evolution that replaced the megaphone with an electronic device called a microphone and developed the means to amplify the needle’s vibrations to fill rooms and auditoriums?

I look at the squiggles etched into the vinyl surface and can scarcely imagine how they will be translated into glorious sound. And don’t get me started on how over the years they have miniaturized the process so the sound from hundreds of these 12-inch records can be condensed into a flash drive, also known as a thumb drive because it is about the size of a human’s thumb.

I am in awe of the technology that brought music into my living room 60 years ago. I am only beginning to wrap my head around the technology that has evolved in the ensuing six decades.

The camera I used to take the photo of a record being played can also shoot video, record sound, take dictation, connect me with countless sources of news, information and entertainment, read me a book, play me any recorded music I want to hear, and oh yes, I can make a phone call with it.

And it weighs about six ounces.

My father was born three years after the first commercial radio station went on the air. I often marveled at the scientific achievements he witnessed in his lifetime, and lately I’ve been pondering what I’ve been experiencing in my own lifetime. Outside of the realm of politics and government — where the goal seems to be to wreak as much death and destruction as humans can muster — a lot of people have been busy making this a much better world than our forebears could imagine.

Obscure references and mixed metaphors

So what’s it all about, Ralphie? Is it just for the moment we live? Surely there is a greater purpose than planting one foot in front of the other and breathing the air that we breathe? Yes, sometimes that’s all we need — and to love you — but we’re certainly not here merely to take up space and eat bags and bags of potato chips. And I apologize, I won’t call you Shirley again.

On this morning, when the sun is shining and the snow is melting, I pause and reach for words, and there they are, shiny and new, but not so new that I haven’t heard them before or even written them before in some fashion. Here we are, under the sun, and in point of fact there is indeed nothing new.

That does not, and should not, preclude us from reminding ourselves and our neighbors of the oft-repeated truths about this world. We are here to love our neighbors with patience and kindness and all of the joy we can muster — and in the face of being alive, we ought to muster all kinds of joy, wouldn’t you think? We are fragile and short-lived creatures, little more than a morning mist that is here but gone by noon, and yet we are also hardy creatures who are hard to put down if we’re willing to stand up to the bullies.

I feel like I’m making sense here, but I’m not sure I’m getting through — does that make sense? All I really know in this moment is that life is worth living even when the sunshine feels like an illusion, because it’s proven every morning that light shines again even after the very darkest night.

And so rejoice, and again I say rejoice, because darkness never lasts, and if evil seems to triumph, it is a meaningless triumph because evil cannot prevail for long. It’s part of its nature to be defeated in the end, although the end can seem a long way off sometimes.

Am I naive? Am I foolish to hold out hope? Some days it may seem so, but sure as spring follows winter and day follows night, the good triumphs over evil at the end of every road.

What’s that you say? “But eventually we cycle back to winter, and night always follows day”? “Darkness and light are brothers who need each other”? “Good needs evil and evil needs good”?

I can’t argue with those first two points — but good “needs” evil? I think not. Evil may hone the good as resistance sharpens a knife, but there is no “need” for the fruits of evil. Surely goodness and mercy are elements of a well-lived life. A life can be well-lived without ever encountering evil, but the opposite is not true.

Light and dark, winter and spring, make good metaphors for good and evil, but they are inexact metaphors. A person does not need a dark side to balance the light. The more good there is in the world, the healthier we are. While dark is inevitable, in the sense of sunset balancing sunrise, goodness need not be balanced by evil to thrive.

W.B.’s Book Report: addendum

I mentioned the other day that I had not marked anything on Page 72 of Don’t Waste Your Life, the John Piper book I am reading that I don’t remember reading except that I made a dog ear on that page.

It turns out that I did indeed take a pen to that book a couple of pages later. In fact, I underlined one sentence in red. I very rarely reach for a red pen.

“Any thing but a denial of the truth.” It’s part of a John Bunyan quote about whether it’s ever appropriate for Christians to retreat rather than take a stand for their faith. Bunyan’s point was that it’s OK to choose not to risk life or limb for a variety of reasons — “Any thing but a denial of the truth.”

And then about 10 pages later, I brought out the red pen again: “It is the will of God that we be uncertain about how life on this earth will turn out for us. And therefore it is the will of the Lord that we take risks for the cause of God.”

So we stand our ground on the truth of who Christ is, as we approach the annual observance of how he paid the price for refusing to deny the truth of who he is.

Part of that truth, of course, is referring to Jesus Christ in the present tense.

The dog ear and the underlined sentences are messages from my past self, left for a time when their full meaning would resonate for my present-day self.