Past and Future

In today’s Sunday School class that I taught, we were talking about the importance of ancestry and where we came from. The topic was timely because we are studying some of the names for Jesus of Nazareth and today we were talking about Jesus the Son of David and what that meant.

The Jewish people spent a lot of time and energy making sure they knew first that they were descendents of Abraham, and second, which of Jacob’s sons they came from. They also were interested in whether or not they were descended from Royalty (the lineage of David the King, or some other person in their history.

One of the people in the class, during the initial minutes of the class when I was introducing the topic of ancestry, talked of her grandmother, who lived to age 109 and never liked to talk about the past, but look forward to the future. That is a noble thing, to be sure, but I wonder if there was something lost there.

No, we can’t live in the past, but we can learn from the past. To know what happened years ago…how people lived, the conditions of society, etc…is to be able to better understand the world today and how to survive and navigate within it. To hear of the struggles and trials of those in the Great Depression, one of the Great Wars, or some other major time is to better appreciate what we have now and to determine that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past.

I told the class that I marvel even now at my grandfather, who died when I was 16 years old. He was 96. Born in the mid to late 1800’s, he was witness to Reconstruction following the Civil War, the addition of all of the states from Colorado on, the founding of the WCTU (Womens Christian Temperance Union) and the Suffrage amendment to the US Constitution, five wars, the defeat of Custer, the Kodak camera, alternating current (forerunner of modern electrical systems) the light bulb, the machine gun, the x ray, the airplane, the vacuum tube, Prohibition, the Cyclotron, the Roaring 20’s, the Great Depression, the advent of plastics, Social Security (he was already eligible for Social Security when it went into effect), radio, television, the transistor, UNIVAC, nuclear submarines, the integrated circuit, Bob Dylan, the computer mouse, and space flight (Gemini XII).

He especially marveled at television and how those pictures and sounds could be transmitted through thin air, picked up by aluminum tubes (antennas), and converted by a box in his living room to picture and sound. I really think that if he thought he could have done it at his age, he would have gone to school to learn how television worked.

I had the privilege, three years after he died, to go to school and learn how television works (the new digital television is a whole ‘nuther animal). I marveled then at how it works and still am amazed that anyone could have thought up all of the intricate interplay and delicate balancing acts that have to occur in the circuitry and the concept for television to be reality.

Had he not experienced the coming of the light bulb, would he have marveled so at television? Had he not witnessed reconstruction, would the nuclear submarine have meant anything to him? Do you get my point? The past helps to drive who and what we are today and who and what we will be in the future. The past isn’t our roadmap to the future, but the past helps us choose the path we will take.