“How time flies” is a statement most of us use when we meet someone we knew in the past and have met again. It’s so true though and when we think about what’s new in this high tech world we wonder what is next. These past 10 years have brought us so many new things, computers have changed, cell phones, I pads, many different tablets,and household items such as microwave ovens have all had upgrades. What is this world coming to anyhow?

I have heard of such things as making food in a machine of sorts. Perhaps we will be making a steak instead of buying it at the store! It all sounds ridiculous. I have heard there isn’t anything we can’t make. Does that mean when we want a new dress or suit we just make it, and I don’t mean sew it from a pattern either?

I am from the old school. We didn’t even have electricity in our small town in Northern Minnesota. We used oil lamps which we now use as decorations. It didn’t give much light but it did keep us together. (unless we had a whole bunch of oil lamps) Horses were what powered our school buses and brought the farmer and his family to town on Saturdays. The outhouse was the only bathroom we knew. We took our baths in laundry tubs in the kitchen. And we only took baths on Saturday night. Our refrigerator was a hole in the kitchen floor with a root cellar underneath. The washing machine had a gas motor and a wringer. You used two laundry tubs when you washed clothes and it was awful easy to get your arm caught in the wringer!

We had tablets too, only they didn’t do anything. We had to use out pencils and write or draw on them. We did something that is illegal today though. We prayed at the beginning and sometimes at the end of our school day. We had Bible readings too. And once a week we were excused from school to go to our churches for instruction.

There wasn’t much in the line of toys. Oh we had marbles and swings and we made our own hop scotch lines in the dirt. Of course we had balls and there were ball games all summer. In winter we ice skated when the firemen flooded an area behind the town hall. It was hard to find a place to roller skate because we didn’t have sidewalks, but once in awhile a farmer would let us roller skate in his barn.

We had music though, but we made our own. Nearly every house had a piano and we sang around them every time we got together. We had a phonograph we had to wind up before it made a sound and as the song ended the thing was going pretty slow. The music then was not good.

Was it tough? I guess if I knew what we have today I’d say it was tough. But the kids played outside summer or winter. The families were closer and the neighborhood was closer too. I think there are many things we could change in our country that would bring us back to what we did have back in the 30’s. It’s a fact we need to bring our country back to what we had, and not so far back as the 30’s either!

The other day I saw two men beating up an old woman on TV. There were people walking past, some stopped to watch, but no one called for help or did they help themselves. I wondered, “what would I do?” I hope I would at least call 911! I have no idea what that woman did but whatever it was the beating was wrong.

You probably have heard about the three young guys who beat up a younger student in a school bus just the other day. The bus driver didn’t even intervene! It was reported that the kid who suffered the beating had turned in the three perpetrators for having drugs in school. There, the youngster had intervened and suffered for it. Again, I ask myself, “what would I do?”I’d like to think I would turn in the three kids too!

We see people sleeping beside big buildings, in parks or just on the sidewalk on TV every day. But do we go and find these people, feed them, bring them a blanket or better yet, take them home with us? Not too many of us do that, but there are some who do. Are you one of the few?

Jesus was never too busy to be interrupted to heal a ragged man who was trying to get into a pool which healed many. He stopped his travel one day to heal the man who had leprosy. He stopped to pick up a child and tell the people standing around that they must become like little children too.

Yes, we have been asked to help others who need us, but too often we use these excuses: I don’t have time to get involved. I send money to help those in need so I don’t have to actually be involved. (that one hits me pretty hard.) I know that the Salvation Army does good work in feeding and clothing the poor, but that’s a big organization, they don’t need me to help serve the hungry, poor or to ring a bell to get more money at Christmas time. It’s dangerous to get near those homeless people.

If only we would stop and think that Jesus died for these people too! And God loves them and has given us this great commandment: Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself. (paraphrasing).Remember, everyone is your neighbor, that homeless one, the rich man who is sick and lonely. Everyone needs help sometimes. Why not get involved?