(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Drones”, originally shared on December 18, 2024. It was the 342nd video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Lots
of people are looking up these days. For drones. There is a better reason to
look up, and it promises a much better outcome. Today, we’re going to find out
what it us.
Drones of unknown origin, at least unknown to everyone except those who
are flying them, have been popping up on both coasts of our country lately.
They have been producing a lot of weird reactions. And nobody claims to know
where they are coming from.
Can we have already
reached the long-dreaded Artificial Intelligence singularity, when our machines
are smarter than we are, find us a nuisance, and are producing more and more of
themselves in order to become our robot overlords?
Or are drones the
result of people with bad intentions toward us? Could they be spying on our
military and industrial facilities? Or carrying bombs, grenades, mines, or
toxic materials? Or are they remotely guided missiles? But, if so, why do they
fly at night with lights shining out of them? And why aren’t we using attack
drones? Or capture drones?
Are they
experiments paving the way for our long-anticipated flying cars?
Why doesn’t our
government claim to know anything about them? It they can track them with radio
waves (and they can), why don’t they?
Or are they just
toys for the affluent. I mean, Amazon and lots of other places have been
selling drones for years. I’d bet that we’ll see a lot more of them
after the Christmas presents have been opened.
Some have said that
some of the ”drones” are just normal manned aircraft. OK, but some are not.
And that could be
an opportunity!
When I served at a
Lutheran church in San Dimas, there was a family there whose young sons
competed in shotgun shooting contests around California and the Southwest and
did quite well. One day, I was talking with their parents after church and said
that I might have found a career path for them. I had read that some police
departments were finding and training shotgun marksmen to shoot down drones!
And lots of people
today are calling for just that.
The problem is that
you can’t do it over a populated, or even a developed, area because pieces of
metal could fall on people, and flames could set structures on fire. We would
have to weigh risks and rewards.
And maybe whatever
is up there is being blown out of proportion by our fears.
“The War of the
Worlds” was a 1938 radio dramatization of a story by H.G. Wells about creatures
from outer space invading New Jersey. Unfortunately, people who didn’t
tune-in on time to hear the introduction didn’t know that it was a
dramatization, and thought it was real, causing mass panic across the United
States. Their enemy was literally fear itself.
Sally and I, and
our son James and his girlfriend Nicole, watched the movie, “Godzilla Minus
One” the other day. As with previous Godzilla movies, it was a representation
of the Japanese psyche after World War II and the destructive power of nuclear
weapons, and the fear of them continuing to today.
Maybe our current
fear of the unexplained appearance of drones is a product of both our
fear of the unknown and the rising tension between world powers and the
prospect of all-out war.
Perhaps our fear of
drones is related to our guilt today that we are so relatively affluent and at
peace while most of the world suffers, and our fear that our way of life may be
overwhelmed by people who are literally willing to die in order to enter into
our country.
Whatever is going
on, at least it has a lot of people looking up!
And that’s exactly
what we are supposed to be during Advent, as in Psalm 24:7-8,
7 Lift up your
heads, O gates!
and be lifted up, O ancient doors!
that the King of glory may come in.
8 Who is the King
of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle.
The Messiah, the
King of Glory, who came at the first Christmas, is coming again in the Last
Judgement!
In this last Sunday
in Advent, we celebrate what was fulfilled in Mary, the Mother of God, among people
who had waited for 1,000 years. We celebrate that God always keeps God’s
promises, even when it seems to be taking a very long time.
This is an
important lesson for we who have been waiting for Jesus’s second coming for
2,000 years.
What do drones do? The
give us a longer vision.
They could be
exploring and seeing new things, or seeing old things from a new angle, or
invading privacy, or causing harm. It depends upon how they are used.
Drones could be
like nitroglycerine: able to blow up bridges, or able to heal the human heart.
Which one is up to
us.
So, which is it?
What are we looking into the skies for this Christmas? One who comes to
destroy, or one who comes to save?
Jesus said, in John
10:10,
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came
that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
The abundant life
that Jesus came to give now begins in Mary, in the gospel reading that will be
shared in the vast majority of churches all over the world this Sunday, Luke
1:39-55, beginning with verses 39-45,
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean
town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of
Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s
greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy
Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among
women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has
this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For
as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for
joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a
fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
What is a drone?
Drones are also
known as the worker bees that surround a queen bee, mindless doing her bidding,
in a hive-mind. Like the undead drones in Star Trek’s Borg cube. Like those
today who follow their party, or their ideology, or their social media tribes,
reading only that which confirms their bias, seeking only to be validated.
Living the abundant
life of Jesus Christ, however, is something glorious, as in when a human being
does the will of God, even while they live as ones who are both saints
and sinners!
Mary’s life had
changed. She was what we would consider a girl, possibly as young as 12. The
Angel Gabriel had told her Jesus was coming., that Jesus would be born from
her, the virgin Mary. We read it in the verses immediately preceding this
coming Sunday’s Gospel reading.
But now, in today’s
verses from Luke, it was getting real. Even John the Baptist was
excited, and he was in Mary’s relative Elizabeth’s womb! Yup. That was John the
Baptist leaping for joy in there. 😊
So yes, John the
Baptist is present in the second, and in the third, and now in
the Gospel reading for the fourth Sunday in the season of Advent! 😊
How did Elizabeth
know what was going on? The same way as any of us knows what’s going on, as we
read today, “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.”
She saw that the
Messiah, the deliverer, the Son of God, Jesus, was about to be born of Mary.
The Natal Star, the Nativity, were coming.
How do we celebrate
that first coming and prepare for the Second Coming of Jesus?
Look up!
As Jesus says in Luke
21:28,
28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and
raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Redemption is
coming! We celebrate and prepare for it as Mary does, in the conclusion to our
Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, in Luke 1:46-55,
46 And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit
rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has
looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty
One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for
those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown
strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought
down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled
the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped
his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the
promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
What was unique in
Mary? Nothing. Mary just believed what had been revealed to her. As Elizabeth
said, “blessed is she who believed that there would be a
fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
It’s the same
longing that we have at Advent, as we celebrate one coming of Jesus Christ and
watch for the second.
Jesus is coming.
Invite someone who you know needs a new life to repent and to know Him. Let us
prepare the way for Jesus Christ.
And look up!
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