Unfortunately when it comes, we are not always ready to change. If we are the ones who built a better mouse trap, it’s a great idea. It the change is thrust upon us, we wonder if it really helps. This week I thought of skills or improvements that have affected my life. Some I could still welcome; others are dismissed without a care.
The first I thought of was my daddy sitting me down at the dining room table with a variety of brown wrappers and a stack of coins. I realize I have lost some of you already. The task was to count, say, twenty nickels. The trick was to place them intact at the end of a brown wrapper, maintaining the rigidity of that column of coins while tightly rolling the wrapper to the end. If it was done correctly, one of the open slots identified that you had $1.00 worth of counted nickles to take to the bank. A short improvement for a time was the bank having counting machines for a bag of mixed coins. Now the whole process is relegated to a corner of the grocery store. Half dollars have disappeared. What will be the next coin to go?
My other most dramatic one was almost a right of passage. Open gas heaters were in every room. Only adults could light because they were dangerous. The gas identified by the smell that filled the air while you were turning the lever and striking the match could either flash out and burn you or explode and eliminate you. I watched numerous demonstrations before I felt ready to go solo. Truthfully, though I can name several advantages to central heat, I miss that evidence of warmth. To pull a chair close to a visible flame was almost as good as a wood fire, and during that time, I never shivered in a bathroom.
Make your own list. Though sports cars and some trucks still have them, I waste no time longing for a gear shift. High on my delights to have now is a cellphone and an easy voice message. No more running to the “convenient” location to try and answer a call or to have to punch and rewind to maybe hear a message. It may sound like a small step forward, yet I appreciate the person who thought to mark company name and size in the back of various tops instead of a tag I ended up cutting out.
We count on life moving onward. Babies grow and teenagers master driving cars. We learn how to take turns. Progress doesn’t always involve a change in things. In relationships or community, the flow is almost imperceptible turning until we say it didn’t used to be this way. One individual moving toward another individual helps build a new community. An electric knife was an idea, a prototype, a reality. The progress of world changes depends on our vision, and what we do to create a new reality.
For we are laborers together with God. 1 Corinthians 3:9
Let Me Tell Ya 