Not long ago some of the neighborhood kids stopped by for a visit. The two boys are ones with which I talk quite a bit when I have the opportunity. One boy especially, Nicholas, is my personal project. I hope to get him and his family coming to our church and sharing in our growth. Nicholas is such an inquisitive kid. Everything is interesting to him. He was curious to see our house since his is just two doors down and looks a little like ours.
The downstairs area looked very familiar as did the upstairs area. However, when I showed him the middle bedroom something caught his eye. My grandfather's old desk sits next to the door under the light switch in the middle bedroom. There, perched prominently on the desk, is a typewriter. Nicholas ooohed and aaahed. "Cool computer, Tom. Where's the screen?" he asked. All of a sudden it dawned on me. This kid is young enough that he has never seen a typewriter before.
"It's a typewriter, Nicholas," I responded. "This is what we used before word processors." Then came the question. "Tom, what's a word processor?" Suddenly I realized just how young Nicholas was. Word processors haven't been in vogue for many years. I had one back when they were in the process of being fazed out. So I fell back on what Nicholas now knew. "A word processor was a typewriter with a screen. You typed what you wanted to print and then looked at the screen to make sure it was what you wanted and the way you wanted it. Then you hit print and it printed the words."
"Wow, how long ago did they quit using those?" Nicholas asked. "Oh, I'd say the early nineties." Then it hit me. We are living in a new millennium. All the things I grew up with have changed. TV is no longer only in black and white. Gas is unleaded. Cars have seat belts and airbags. We take our phones with us and have more than one in the house. Linoleum has been replaced by "shine-all vinyl." But Jesus still died for my sins and rose the third day from the dead.
Progress can't change fact. Notice I didn't say faith. Faith is our response to fact, not the fact itself. "Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you; unless you believed in vain." 1 Corinthians 15:1, 2 Preachers are reporters. All they do is report the good news. Two thousand years of challenge and doubt has not stopped the good news from being preached. That is has endured that long tells us the gospel is fact. What we do with it is our faith.