Author, educator and commentator Dr. James Denison has been pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas since June, 1998. Prior to that, he was pastor at churches in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as Midland (at First Baptist!) and Mansfield, Texas. When Janet and I got married in 1980, our first joint purchase was a portable color television we bought out of the newspaper. It turned out to be afflicted with multiple-personality disorder, and worked not a single minute in our home as well as it worked in the home where we bought it.
Given my electronic incompetence, my solution was foil on the rabbit ears, the more the better. When that didn't work, I slapped the offending device on a particular spot on its side. This behavior didn't really improve the quality of the picture, but it made me feel better. We finally sold the TV to someone who probably appreciates me as much as you appreciate the neighbor who walks his St. Bernard in your yard.
If my old television is still frustrating someone today, this can't be good news: Congress has just granted rabbit ears a stay of execution. This morning's Wall Street Journal tells us that the date by which TV stations must stop broadcasting in analog format has been moved from February 17 to June 12. The reason is simple: Preparations for the switch to digital television are going about as well as Rod Blagojevich's political career.
The Nielsen Co. has found that 6.5 million households, 5.7% of all homes, are still unprepared for the shift to digital. At present, people with rabbit ears must go on a waiting list at the Commerce Department to apply for $40 coupons that offset the cost of digital converter boxes. The problem is that applicants cannot get coupons in time for the February 17 deadline, because it takes weeks for them to arrive in the mail. Economic-stimulus legislation includes $650 million in added money for the converter-box coupon program, allowing the government to issue coupons immediately. That amount may just be enough to fix my schizophrenic television.
It's hard to make old things work as though they were new. My first cell phone was a brick with an antenna. Our first VCR had a wired remote like a leash on a dog. My first computer was a 64K machine with eight-inch floppy disks; my first printer was a dot-matrix contraption which sounded and vibrated like a train in a bathroom.
The good news is that you and I are scheduled for upgrades which will make digital technology blush. We will one day live in new bodies, inhabiting a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21). We are eternal creatures stationed for now in a temporal environment. "Only one life—'twill soon be past; only what's done for Christ will last." What will you do today to impact someone's eternity?
No comments:
Post a Comment