Technology!

With part of his Christmas money from relatives, Logan bought himself a few new Play Station 2 games. One was a tennis game. Like all those sport games, you get to choose who you want to be from a very life-like looking list of players, then you can either play against an opponent or the computer. He and Andrew have been giving it a good go, as it's too hot to do much else. Logan likes to be Lleyton Hewitt and he was very pleased to beat his dad, who'd chosen Roger Federer. I remarked that it's probably about the only time Federer gets beaten by Hewitt these days!

But being a child of the 1970s, I couldn't help comparing this game, with its vivid graphics, to a similar Christmas present my brother received about 30 years ago. Although I used the word "similar", the two games were poles apart. My brother's old game was one of those early TV tennis games with little white sticks. I'm sure some of you remember these. We'd move our sticks around the screen with clunky old controllers and when they made contact with the spot that represented a ball, they'd BEEP. And back in 1978, we used to LOVE that game! That game was one of the highlights of all the presents anyone received that year! And how my kids would laugh to see it now. Although we still feel fairly young, I think many of us are in the process of watching our childhood days relegated to "the good ole' days."

And my poor old parent's generation can't help being pretty clueless about the whole technology thing. I suppose they can't help it when you consider that in their childhood, they didn't even have TV!

At my sister's place on Christmas Day, my Dad asked his grandsons what they were up to, to which my nephew Travis replied, "I'm just going to burn a CD for Logan." Dad says, "Don't do that. It can't be that bad and someone else might like it!" They had to explain, "We're not going to really burn it in a fire, Papa!" Similarly, a few weeks ago, I heard an elderly gentleman ask a group of girls about Emma's age what they'd like for Christmas. "Nintendo DS games," they replied, and I knew instantly that they'd be asked to explain what Nintendo DS games were. I was not mistaken. The old gentleman was mystified.

I read a very interesting thought not long ago, about a Biblical prophecy in Daniel 12: 4. The scripture says, "...even to the time of the end: many shall run too and fro and knowledge will be increased." The author explained his opinion that this quote was clearly pointing directly forward to the 20th & 21st centuries. And it's probably only just beginning to get rolling. Before we know it, we'll all be grandparents ourselves, who'll possibly lose the plot when we ask our grandchildren what they'd like for Christmas, and they might reply, "I'd like a hydrofusion megatron for my NintendoXGZN 1000000."