[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during September 2021]
Twenty years ago I was in Trafalgar Square with the then Mayor of London and senior members of the management of the Ford Motor Company, along with a gaggle of international motoring journalists. We were attending the global launch of a new car – a two-seater fully electric urban runabout that was expected to have a major influence on city motoring. There were thirteen vehicles at the launch – who decided that 13 was an appropriate number? The cars had their 15 minutes of fame and we went back to our respective offices.
Then the world changed.
The date was the 11th September 2001. Two commercial airliners had been flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a third hit the Pentagon and a fourth was brought down by its passengers before it could reach the White House.
It was, by all accounts, a bright clear day in the northeastern USA, no floods, no bush fires, no tornados; not the type of day when one would expect thousands of people to die. No doubt people were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage right up to the moment that the disaster struck.
Jesus used similar phrases to describe the situation immediately before the flood that killed everybody apart from Noah and his family …
People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. [Luke 17 v27 NIVUK]
… and then again referring to the destruction of Sodom:
It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. [ibid, v28]
Jesus was not just recollecting ancient history from the early chapters of the book of Genesis. He was talking about history-future; his-story, his own return in glory.
As I have demonstrated above, many of us can recall exactly where we were when we heard about ‘nine-eleven’. It is, perhaps, a sobering thought to realise that there is a generation growing up with no such memory; for them the events of that day are history.
How much more sobering, then, to realise that many generations have grown up thinking of Jesus as some character from history, if that. For them, the rumours of his return have been much exaggerated.
A few years later Ford decided that there was no future in the electric car and they discontinued its development. Are we at risk of writing off those who do not share our vision of the future? Jesus said that he will return when people are not expecting him – that, too, is an event that we should remember.
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © the Author
