Well, I'm not sure. I'm no technophobe, but I'm typically late on the curve in getting new gadgets, so it was only a couple years ago that I got my first PDA, then called a Palm Pilot, before that, I guess it was known as an electronic calendar. Anyway, I trusted my life to a hundred-dollar gadget I could keep in my purse. All the family addresses fit neatly into it for trips to the post office. It had a built in calculator, note pad, and a calendar, that, as far as I know, could keep appointments for the next billion years. I am sad to report that it died. No new batteries would make it run again. The number listed for customer service doesn't work anymore, so in my estimation, it is irreparable. Therefore, I've been out on my search for something new. Nowadays, which is two years later, the same kind of gadget can be used as a phone, can send email, and with the addition of a fold out keyboard, I could write sermons on it if I wanted to. It's about the power of the first computer Chuck and I bought after we were married, and it would fit in my purse. Yes, it's a bit pricier. Yes, it runs on rechargeable batteries rather than eating through "triple A's" like my old one used to. But I'm just not sure about it.

I want one like my old one, and they don't make them anymore. All I wanted was the same thing - only working. All the information that I've backed up into my computer is worthless now except to print out on paper - ha ha - and start all over again. I'm back to the beginning point - my fancy, fabulous calendar - replaced by the paper calendar that I took everywhere with me before I went out on this technological limb. I'm back to the beginning, and I'm beginning to think that I trust my paper and pencil more.

Perhaps this is why it's so difficult when God says through the prophet Isaiah, "I am about to do a new thing." Wait, we just learned the old thing, and now God is going to do a new thing. I was just beginning to know my way around Methodist Medical Center, and now that the new parts are open, I've already gone down on an elevator that I should have gone up. We don't like it when our routines change. We'll watch the reruns instead of turning off the TV to do something else. Predictability and familiarity are part of the subtle balance of the human system. What do you mean, change?

So how do we come to know where God stands on this stuff? God might care that I keep promises I've made to go see someone in the hospital, but I'm sure God doesn't really care if I check for that appointment on a new PDA or a paper calendar. Does God keep up with technology, or is my PDA situation irrelevant when it comes to scripture? How do we know if a "new thing" is from God or just part of the cultural expectation to keep churning out newer gadgets and technologies to market in the world economy?

In some instances, like my calendar concerns, God seems out of the loop. But on the front of your bulletin, you'll read that Susan Thistlethwaite, who researched the Human Genome project from a theological point of view, notes that scientific discoveries, new things we learn about our world, can have both destructive and constructive outcomes. The Manhattan Project itself, although created to give us an advantageous position to win World War II, led not only to the creation of the bomb, but to medical interventions that may have saved more lives than were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is not a justification for the brutalities of war, but it is, as she says, "completion of the picture."

Can we see God at work in the "new things" happening in our world? Or did God start the ball rolling and then dropped out? It's not an unpopular belief to think that it is the ingenuity of the human enterprise that is creating all these possibilities for connection and globalization. And it's not surprising that we want to take God out of it when we have striven to perfect the quality of the television picture and yet still make vehicles that are gas-guzzling, ozone-depleting machines. If God is doing a new thing - we hope perhaps that it's not any of these things.

So what is God doing that's new? Maybe some might think of new worship styles. Is God in the process of dragging the church into the 21st century? Here again, we have some interesting questions, and we might not want to blame God for all the "Jesus and me" sermons and music out there that cut people off from the responsibility to their neighbors. Is God in skit and power point, or is God still present in the ancient liturgies of the Psalms and the American hymns of the last two centuries that have shaped our ways of thinking through the generations? Is God doing something new to inspire us to deeper belief, or is it simply the human character of churches to fight over what we might prefer to hear on Sunday mornings?

Just a few decades ago, there was a flurry of writings on something called "Process Theology." The gist of it was that God is always doing a new thing, that God is out ahead of us, beckoning us into the future. We may outgrow the God of the past it said, but the God in the future is alive and vibrant. It's a very American theology, one that believes that all things are possible, that anything is a problem to be solved. It fully believes that the historical trajectory is that things will get better and better as we push ourselves towards the great utopia. But it's not altogether clear to me that the historical part of this myth will play itself out. Biblical wisdom has in several places a circular view of history. What goes around comes around. There are great high points in our lives together, and there are deep low points in our lives together, but the breaking news is that God intercedes in our history. Jesus comes in and gives us a person to follow rather than a set of rules. There are inbreakings of good news, new things, and pinnacle moments.

Is newer always better? I don't think so. But as things change all around us, and we know they will, our picture of the world changes with it. The world is not the same after the creation of the atomic bomb. Is God still new, alive, and active in our world - by all means. We need to listen and pay attention to the ways in which God still calls us to new life. In what ways is God making ways in our wilderness? In what ways is God making rivers in our deserts? God still offers us the living water when the animals of this world threaten to devour us. We declare God's praise in ways old and new, but once we know God and know ourselves as God's people, the "new" will come alive in us. God is still working in and through our discoveries, working in and through the creative enterprise of human thought and action. Will we be faithful in our applications? Will we allow God's light to shine through us in the double-edged picture where all things have the potential to create or destroy? We do not know. Our faithfulness is limited and fractured, but God's faithfulness to us endures to all generations. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God.

Amen