“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;

and that which is done is that which shall be done:

and there is no new thing under the sun.”  (Eccl. 1:9).

 

Article by Elwin A. McCornack, 1938. 

“When my father was a young lad on the farm out west of Eugene he followed his father and four older brothers around the wheat field.  Each carried a short steel sickle, and as the wheat fell from the blade, it fell onto the reaper's left arm; and when a sizable bundle had accumulated, the reaper bound it together with a wisp of the newly cut straw, dropped it in the stubble and swung his blade to start another bundle.  Around and around the field, each reaper cutting right at the heels of the man next before him.

“Grandfather and his boys were harvesting the grain they had planted that the family might be fed.  They knew of no other way of getting the harvest in.  All men harvested just as they were doing.  There was no other way.  Looking back from where we stand today we see that they were practicing the identical method used by the reapers who labored in the field of Boaz where Ruth the Moabitess gleaned.  The picture was the same.  Thirty one hundred years had passed without any change in this most essential and much used process.

“ When these bundles of wheat had lain out in the sun a sufficient time to cure and harden, Grandfather and the boys were again in the field, this time with oxen and wagons and hauled the bundles to the barnyard where they were piled in great weather proof stacks.  Then when thrashing day came, the bundles were pitched down on the hard-beaten ground of the yard, and horses and oxen were driven around and around over the ground until the straw was separated from the wheat.  Again we see the picture as no different than that of the Children of Israel thrashing out the grain on the thrashing floors of Pharaoh thirty five hundred years before.

“And Grandfather had told his sons of the trip to America from Scotland just a few years before.  (1853).  How they had made the crossing in a wind-driven sailing ship.  Just such a ship as had bourn the venturesome Phoenicians on their voyages into the unknown world of two thousand B.C.

“Since those remote days the world had stood still with little change.  Gunpowder, the printing press, yes, and a few of man's new ideas had come on the scene, but the progress of mankind and of the world was largely unchanged.  It can truly be said that at the time my people came to the Oregon country the forward progress of man was still geared to the slow, measured tread of the oxen.

“Note now the things which have happened in my father's day and mine.  Things which were unknown to an earlier generation.  The new things which have come about.  The list is limitless.  The harnessing and uses of electricity.  An understanding of the world of bacteriology and its uses in protecting human life.  The telephone, the radio, television, radar.  The use of steam and the railways.  Petroleum and its thousand uses.  The airplane and its world-wide service.  Each one of these innovations and a hundred more has stepped up the pace at which the world is moving from the four miles an hour tread of the ox to a fantastic speed much faster than that of sound.  Why has all this come to pass in our time?  Why was it that God in his infinite wisdom did permit the world to stand still for three thousand years and then in your time and mine pull the plug as it were and permit the world to rush to its full and final destiny?  That is truly the sixty-four dollar question of our day.”

Story by James E. Kerns, 2012.

The old man sat and marveled over his grandchildren.  They were lively, smart, straight, full of fun, and knowledgeable.  My, were they lively!  The house was quiet now that they’d gone home.  He was grateful—grateful for their exuberance, grateful for their interest in him, grateful for their visits, and grateful for the peace that settled over the house in their absence.

How things had changed!  It wasn’t long ago when he’d been young like that.  He’d had zest, too.  He’d played hard with his children.  He’d worked hard as a father and a provider.  But he was tired now.  Their very activity made him tired.  He was stooped in the shoulders.  Was that a result of his life of hard labor, or was it his genetics?  His profile was that of his grandfather, and of his grandfather’s sons.  Their shoulders had been stooped, too.

Grandfather had noted how his own grandfather had crossed the plains in a covered wagon pulled by oxen, had established a new farm in the wilderness of the Oregon Territory, had planted wheat, and had harvested it with a scythe, just like Boaz had done 3000 years before in the Bible.

Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David, Solomon.

Andrew, Herbert, Elwin, Janet, James.

He occupied the same genealogical relationship to his wheat-harvesting ancestor as Solomon, the Preacher, occupied to Boaz.  Solomon wrote, “There is no new thing under the sun.”

In Solomon’s time that was true.  It was no longer true in James’ time.  It wasn’t true in Elwin’s, either.  Elwin was born in 1883.  He’d witnessed the world change its pace from the tread of oxen to travel by airplane.  In Solomon’s time, and maybe clear up to the year 1400 A.D., it had been theoretically possible for one man to know everything in the world that was worth knowing.  Knowledge was limited then.

A knowledge explosion had taken place thereafter.  It began slowly at first.  The collective knowledge of the world took many years to double, but double it did, again and again and again, and faster and faster.  Inventions were made.  The world took off.

Grandfather wondered why.

The old man thought that he had some answers to his grandfather’s question.  Grandfather was astounded at the speed with which the world had changed in his day.  He died 50 years ago.  He’d seen airplanes and TVs; but he hadn’t seen computers, cell phones, I-pads, videos, e-mail, FAX, VCRs, DVDs, and all the other lettered technology that the old man himself didn’t understand.

The grandchildren understood it all.  Grandfather would have been amazed to see them communicating through a palm-sized devise that they carried in their pockets.  To see them also taking pictures with that devise would have been too much.

The grandkids had taken pictures of their grandfather with their cell phone, had used the “wrinkle app” to age him and themselves 20 or 40 years, and had laughed themselves silly over the results.  The same cell phone had instant access to the world’s collective knowledge, and could be used for an instant and infinite range of good and bad things.

“I don’t belong in this world,” the old man repeatedly told his grandchildren.

“There is no new thing under the sun?”

Maybe not in Solomon’s day, the old man thought.  But today’s a different story.  A dozen years ago people were still talking to one another rather than texting.  They knew how to communicate and socialize.  No one worried about video game addictions then.  TV and bad movies were a parent’s worst worries.  Pornography wasn’t available on a carry-along devise.

Family history was hard to do back then, too.  These kids don’t realize that all of this technology is here for the purpose of hastening the Lord’s work.  The adversary jumps on good things and perverts them for his purposes.  That very technology can either neutralize or magnify his influence.

“There is no new thing under the sun?”

Not so.  This is a new and different world.  Grandfather was right.  It’s rushing to its full and final destiny.  I don’t belong here, the old man thought, but my grandkids do.  They’re straight and smart.  They know how to use technology, and will use it for good.  They’re the generation that will usher in a new—and better—world.