Modernity with its efficiency and improved and enhanced products makes our lives – I was going to say better but I’m not sure. Last evening I was looking out a window at the snow and realized I might never again see Jack Frost’s artwork on window panes. I loved how lacey frosty patterns of hoar would start in the corner of a window and work their way toward the center. I would put my finger on it and watch it melt only to see it refreeze when I took my finger away. Few children today will ever see that.
In the summertime on hot August days my Dad and I would go to the corner grocery store where there was a bright red metal box in the corner. We would lift the lid and peer inside at a variety of sodas immersed in icy cold water. Oh the utter joy of putting your hand in that frigid tank to slowly fish out a Nehi orange. Carefully we would pry off the cap without bending it so we could remove the cork liner. For the rest of the day I would wear the cap on my shirt by putting my shirt between the cap and the pushed-in cork.
Perhaps new and improved isn’t always better? But when it comes to new and improved you and me we cannot argue. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” II Corinthians 5:17. I doubt anyone of us will ever long for the old. The old just isn’t that grand. The new will be out of this world. Awesome.
Written by Roger Bothwell on February 22, 2017
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