Lent 22 - a century

Yesterday I spent some time sitting with Gladys as she gets ready to step into eternity.   She has stopped eating and is asleep most of the time.  She knew I was there and she even made a joke when I arrived, but she was dozing on and off an I put on some worship music and just sat with her.   It was peaceful and nice. I was praying that she just goes quietly and quickly.  She isnt in any pain - she is just very old.

Gladys was born in 1925.   I started wondering at the amazing changes she has seen in her lifetime and thought Id take a look on the internet at the edited highlights of the past 93 years.  A pretty extraordinary timeline.
            
In 1925 - between the wars -  most women still didnt have the vote.  John Logie Baird created the first televisual image. Penicillin wasnt discovered until 1928.  Gladys lived through the creation of Mickey Mouse, the Great Depression and the establishing of Vatican City.
By the time Gladys was ten years old FIFA had instituted the first World Cup and Hitler had risen to power.  Over the following few years she witnessed the abdication of Edward VIII , the start of the Spanish Civil War and then lived through the second world war.
In her lifetime the Hoover Dam was built, the Empire State Building went up, the Hindenburg crashed and Superman was born. In the 40's the sound barrier was broken and the atomic bomb was tested.  In the 50s the Queen came to the throne, Eva Peron died in Argentina and Everest was climbed for the first time.  In 1957 Sputnik was launched and the space race began.  In the 60s Martin Luther King gave his ' I have a dream' speech and the civil rights movement got underway. In 68 the troubles began in Northern Ireland and Gladys then lived through 30 years of war in her homeland. Men walked on the moon
In the 70s the microchip was invented and  the first mass produced computer appeared.  By this point the population of the world had doubled since Gladys was born.  It is 1978 before insulin is manufactured.  And Smallpox isnt eradicated until 1979.
In the 80s we have the space shuttle, AIDS, famine, Chernobyl and the fall of the Berlin wall.
In the 90s the internet is invented and Dolly the sheep is cloned.  Princess Diana dies, the sound barrier is broken on land, Google comes into being and the population of the world has gone up from 2 billion in the 1920s to 6 billion.
2000's see the end of hostilities in Northern Ireland but an awful lot of hostilities everywhere else in the world.  First black president of the USA elected.  The launch of the iphone
2010s the population of the world is now 7 billion and climate change becomes a headline issue.   80 million iphones are sold per quarter.

The world today is staggeringly different from the one into which Gladys was born.  So many of the changes she has lived through have been amazing and wonderful.  People no longer die from infections and broken bones and childbirth.  The world is in our living rooms and outer space is beamed back to us via satellites and space telescopes.   I wonder if there will ever be another generation which will live through the amount of change that the Billy Graham generation has lived through.   It is hard to imagine.


Jesus said something which I always think about every time Im on a plane.  ( see left)   Im sure that Jesus wasn't talking about flying or indeed about going to the cinema or phoning a friend or driving a sports car.  Im sure He was talking about performing signs and wonders and miracles.  But nevertheless, every time I get on a plane these words of scripture come to me and I get the sense that Jesus is smiling and nudging me whispering  ' You are so blessed to have been born in the 20th Century.  I never got to fly in a plane when I was on the earth!'    It really is the most amazing privilege to be alive in these days of monumental change and progress and invention.  Generations of those who have gone before us would not believe what humankind has managed to achieve over the past century.   I know that for every good and wonderful innovation there has probably been a terrible and destructive application but we have taken more steps forward than backwards.  We've eradicated diseases, taken millions out of poverty,  invented any number of useful and helpful gizmos and gadgets and pushed the boundaries of knowledge and experience.   It is easy to look around and see doom and gloom.  But actually we have done some truly amazing things over Gladys's lifetime.  Because God has been in and above and through and over it all.

If I live till Im 93 I wonder what the world will look like then.