Growing up it was my desire to die sometime in my early 40’s. I thought that it would be best to live life so fully that I would be would be like a light bulb that had used up all its “shining hours.” “Pop!” my filament is severed, life’s electricity no is longer effectual and off to eternity I go, or something like that. I thought that if I could really live for twenty-five years, it would be sufficient and I would not need to endure the indignity of growing older.

I was an idiot! Well, mostly an idiot.

Even as a new teenager, I could foresee that life would continually speed up and that the culture I was presently living in would be nearly unrecognizable by the time I was forty. This perception is proved to be true. Although I am not a mechanic, I did everything there was to do to a motor vehicle when I was “young”: I rebuilt carburetors, replaced clutches, and even pulled and replaced an engine. What is under a hood anymore is nearly unrecognizable. Yesteryear, I used a pencil to dial phone numbers on a black AT&T rotary phone. My pocket cell phone has more memory and performs more complicated functions than the computer I used in college, by a factor of ten. I used a disposable bulb camera and 110 Kodak film to remember where I had been and what I had done. Now I post digitally captured photos to my own personal presence on a thing called the “internet.” The “internet” of my day was a teletype connected to a “mainframe” server located at our local county’s offices. The server took up a room the size of most houses and boasted not even a “green screen” visual interface. In my youth actors didn’t curse on television shows and bad guys fell over into a bloodless heaps after they were dispatched by the “good guys.” Now even “family friendly” shows include the use of words considered at one time to be profane. Violence today must not only include the proper volume of blood spray but also the confusion of whether or not the “good guy” or the “bad guy” is in the right.

And then there is “going viral.”

Viruses were something to be avoided when I was young. That is why we washed our hands after going to the bathroom! Viruses were something to be avoided when I was young. That is why we never opened attachments on our computers unless we were positive of its origin and content. Today, if this blog entry were to go viral I could brag about it to all my friends and garner “oohs and ahhs” of admiration. I would be somebody and maybe could even build a comfortable lifestyle on one small accomplishment gone viral.

And yet even the present day’s sense of “virus” is temporary. Just like the illnesses of my childhood, we still get over things “gone viral.” The kid who can blow milk out of her nose while reciting the ABC’s backward and playing a lively jig on the violin will soon fall back into the great ignominy of being a passing popular distraction.

And so it has been said of the “Jesus Movement” throughout the age since his advent. Yet here I am, experiencing the reality of my “bulb” not burning quite as hotly as I would like anymore and adjusting myself to the fact that my first forty may just be a good and necessary warm up for the next forty and Jesus is still going viral. I am not “over him,” my family is not “over him,” and the world is still unable to ignore him.

Some things really don’t change.

As was Paul’s custom, he went to the synagogue service, and for three Sabbaths in a row he used the Scriptures to reason with the people. He explained the prophecies and proved that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead. He said, “This Jesus I’m telling you about is the Messiah.” Some of the Jews who listened were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with many God-fearing Greek men and quite a few prominent women. But some of the Jews were jealous, so they gathered some troublemakers from the marketplace to form a mob and start a riot. They attacked the home of Jason, searching for Paul and Silas so they could drag them out to the crowd. Not finding them there, they dragged out Jason and some of the other believers instead and took them before the city council. “Paul and Silas have caused trouble all over the world,” they shouted, “and now they are here disturbing our city, too. And Jason has welcomed them into his home. They are all guilty of treason against Caesar, for they profess allegiance to another king, named Jesus.” (Acts 17:2-7, NLT)