We used books when I was a kid. Real books with paper and pages and everything. A phone book. The Yellow Pages The Wish-book from Sears and Roebuck. Encyclopedia Britannica. A Webster dictionary. A road atlas. All were staples of every house (we had everything but the encyclopedia). 

Cars didn’t have computer chips then. Only NASA had computers. Not houses. Not cars. Our cars had seat belts, but who used them? Car seats for babies? C’mon, I was in my mama’s arms. As I got a little older, I would curl up on the floorboard of the back seat and sleep. As a teenager, on several occasions, I was a passenger in the back of a pickup truck. Not the backseat (there were no backseats in pickup trucks), I rode in the cargo bed. Bumpy roads were both fun and scary. 

I owned a Walkman on which I played a cassette tape (the eight-track generation was before my time). I made a mixtape from my favorite songs off an AM radio station. Later I ordered cassettes and then CDs from Columbia House. I had a boombox too. My dad called my music choice “devil music.” I would tell him it was Christian music. Petra, Stryper and DeGarmo and Key were a few of my choices. I’m not sure my dad was convinced. His favorite words: “Turn it down!”

Cameras and phones were two completely separate things. Cameras used film, which we would take to Fotomat in the parking lot of K-Mart (my hometown had the distinction of the very first K-Mart). Several weeks after the picture-worthy event had happened, we would get the pictures back. Usually someone’s head was cut off or they weren’t looking at the camera. My brother Fred was never smiling. Sorry, no retakes. 

Our phone was a rotary variety and was located on the kitchen wall with a 12-foot (usually tangled-up) cord. We had a party line. That sounds fun (Party Line!  Yippee!!), but in fact it wasn’t fun. “Party Line” meant we shared the phone line with the Evans family who lived kiddy-corner from our back yard. We had to quietly lift the receiver to see if someone from the Evans’ household were already talking on the phone. Mrs. Evans was always on the phone. My brother Fred got in trouble for listening in on Chuckie Evans’ teenage conversations (maybe that’s why he wasn’t smiling in the family pictures). 

Life is different these days. Technology is different. Somethings are better (no party lines). Somethings are worse. I don’t pine for the “good old days,” but I do pray for better days ahead. Everything has changed, but the author of Hebrews reminded us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). Jesus is the Constant. Here’s the profound truth: Jesus hasn’t changed, but Jesus changes everything, In the midst of a constantly changing world, Jesus is the Rock on which we stand. Our world needed Jesus then. Our world needs Jesus now. Jesus was the answer then. Jesus is the answer now. 

Everything has changed, but nothing has changed. We still need Jesus!