WORDS FROM W.W. October 11, 2011
About a year and a half ago Kevin, my son-in-law, passed on to me his PlayStation 2 game system. A while before that Kevin had upgraded to the PS3. He blew the dust off of his old system and handed it down to me. (Point of Instruction: Old people hand down to younger people things like cars, dining room tables, books, and jewelry. Younger people hand down things that deal with technology to older folks.)
When I got the PS2 I tuned it on once within the first day, got tired of driving off the road in the racing game I was playing, and then put the game system away for…the next 18 months. Last week I got it back out again! Back in August the Liberty High School Girl’s basketball team that I help coach had a garage sale and I bought about 30 PS2 games for a dollar a piece.
Let the gaming begin!
What I realized however was that I was missing some kind of cord. I don’t know what happened to it. Perhaps it disappeared out of obsoleteness. Whatever it was I needed that cord…whatever it was!
I went to Best Buy first. I noticed they were stocked heavily in PS3 gear and games, but for some reason there was no PS2 section.
Lizi went with me to Game Stop. Not knowing what cord it was that I needed, I just took the whole game system into the store with me. (I noticed that it was about this time that Lizi started keeping her distance from me. What’s up with that?) The young lady behind the counter was very pleasant, although the encounter felt like a scene out of “Extreme Pawn Shop.” I asked her if they had PS2 cords, and she looked relieved. I think she was expecting me to ask her how much she would give me for my game system.
She muttered something like “Don’t see many of these any more.”, as she went looking for the missing cord.
The needed cable cost $15, and then she tried to sell me on the idea of being a member of the Frequent Customer Rewards program. I declined by saying, “Miss, let me be honest with you. I’ve had this game system for a year and a half and I’ve turned it on once.” She smiled. I was close to asking if they had a discount for AARP members, but withstood the urge.
I exited the store with game system and the needed cord. Lizi waited a few seconds before following me.
When I got home I put in one of my new old heavily-discounted garage sale games into the console and started gaming. Clumsy would be complimentary! The control has so much more than the old Atari game stick we used in 1980. It’s almost like a keyboard! I jumped off a cliff numerous times!
It’s going to take some effort and a lot of time, but I’ll master it. Before you know it I’ll be less than ten years “game system irrelevant.”
On the positive, the games are cheap, and nobody wants to play the PS2. You don’t have to share what nobody wants!
The PS3 seems to imposing, so overwhelming, so…current. I can’t imagine being able to play it! Maybe in a few years!
BRIDGE THOUGHT: As I look at my PS2 and how antiquated it is, it occurs to me that such a scenario often happens in the church as well. When I first started in ministry I heard it said quite often that the church was twenty years behind the times. That is still true in many ways. The difficulty is that change is happening so rapidly today that twenty years in the late seventies is equivalent to about fifty years today. That is, what is current becomes obsolete much quicker. The scariness is that when we think we have become more current we’re already dealing with what was. Does this mean that the church must mirror culture that much more closely? Ministry is not about being hip, but it is about maintaining the ability to speak. When what is current for us is twenty years dated we risk giving the message “Come here when you want to deal with your past, not with your future?”
Words from WW Blog 