WHEN TIMES WERE SLOW
I wish I could return
to the time when life was slow, simple, and quiet, where I spent my youth in
the farm. There was no electricity. Gas lamps lighted the house. Eating a meal needed
time of waiting for cooking. Cooking was done
in a stone stove using firewood as fuel. No cold drinks but there was spring water
held and chilled in earthen jars or the “banga.” No refrigerator, but only the “platera” (food
cabinet) where food was covered and
kept. Television was unthinkable, though we had transistor radio, around which,
the family members gathered listening to soap box drama.
There were nights
when I sit by
the window gazing in the dark watching the beautiful fireflies playing in the
dark night air, their twinkling
lights a wonder to behold.
Deadlines and hurried
appointments were virtually non-existent. Only times of planting and harvest,
sowing and reaping, and waiting in
between. I don’t recall we ever had a clock on the wall. The radio announcer was the time keeper.
I wish I could go
back. I am now approaching seniority, and those days would only remain a memory.
I now live in a time of quick, fast, fixes. Ordering a meal now is fast though complicated with all the different choices and combinations of rich, junk food pushed into our faces, selecting one confounds
the mind. Everything is fast and quick. We have gadgets which work fast. Everyone is in a hurry, and busy racing against
deadlines, appointments, catching up with social functions and meetings. The
cellphones, I-pads, I-phones, and computers are the modern day marvels creating
a fast moving world which abhors slackness, or slowness.
No one wants to wait,
and everyone complains if made to wait, more so when the internet connection
is slow. We expect instant gratification and immediate results. We do not know
how to wait anymore. Tempers are quick to flare up in long lines. The discipline
of waiting is a lost virtue.
God did not intend us to live this way. God appointed times and seasons
and it is not our business to hasten what He has established.
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