Thursday, December 1, 2011

With Clouds Descending (Advent #4)

This afternoon, as part of a unit on "Future Worlds", I set my Year 11 English class the task of writing a short piece about the future, using the opening phrase, "In twenty years from now..." While they wrote their pieces, I wrote my own. By the time I had finished it, it felt remarkably Advent-related, so now I am sharing it with you.

In twenty years from now, we will not know how much our world has changed. The rapid growth of our planet and the ever-increasing, ever-changing world of technology will conspire to make us blind to change.

We will wonder: was there ever a world in which we had to leave our houses to go shopping? Did we ever not drive in cars that talk to us, remember the route to work for us, avoid oncoming traffic for us? And yet we will still say, “It is not enough.” We will still say, “It is not enough.” We will still complain when our train is late by a nanosecond, when information on any topic in the world cannot be instantly accessed from wherever we stand at any point in time. We will still say, “Miracles do not happen”, even though all around us will be phenomena that in any previous age would be declared great signs and wonders.

And when we find we still cannot make grey skies turn blue, still cannot reach heaven with our iPhones, or whatever we will call them then; when we find that God is no further from us nor closer to us regardless of the speed of our internet connection, we will still shake our fists at the sky in rebellious fury, still retreat into our labs to turn gold into eternal life, still worship the things our hands have made.

And if, in twenty years from now, we see on the clouds a sign that makes our hearts rise or weep, we will look at what we have made, the miracles we poured our hearts into and ignored, and know that now all our hopes are either met or destroyed. If that happens in twenty years from now, the greatest scientist, the greatest software developer, the greatest engineer, the greatest politician, will all be on their humbled knees.



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