July 2, 2013 (Tuesday)
“Now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2)
The blog about the old tire casings set me to thinking about old things and new things.
When I was a small boy I used to go with my mother to the old Foley’s on Main Street in Houston towards the north end of downtown. We got on an elevator that was operated by a person. That person would call out the number of each floor and recite a list of the types of goods sold there. He had a handle that shifted right to left for up or down and he could regulate the speed with it, too. There were no interior doors; instead there was a ornamental metal scissor-gate, also known as expanding, collapsible, or accordion gate (or did I just dream that?). The elevator operator had to open and close the gate and the doors on a given floor. Foley’s later moved to a spot on the south end of downtown to a new, gigantic building that utilized escalators. It was the talk of the town. People would go to the new store just to ride the escalators, “just like the ones in New York!” Today we hardly notice when we encounter those moving stairs.
There was a waffle shop named, “One’s a Meal.” There were several of them in various locations. They installed an “electric eye,” a light beam in front of the door that opened when you walked into the beam. People would go there just to see the miraculous light beam at work. Today automatic doors are everywhere. We complain if they open a little slowly.
Later in life, when we were living in Dallas, Love Field did some remodeling and installed moving sidewalks. I have never made a trip to that airport without seeing someone walking on the moving sidewalk (or, more likely, running). Sometimes I did it myself. Moving walkways can be found in many places today.
The new ways almost always become the old ways.
Devotional Thought: King Solomon said, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV). On the other hand, God said, “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19 NIV). Solomon was talking about escalators and electric eyes; God was talking about something much better: a “golden age” that began with the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, ushering in a new day of grace. You and I live in this new day.