Back when I was almost 10 years old, an animated TV program ran for a 24 week season from September 1962 – March 1963. It was called the Jetsons and highlighted the family antics of George Jetson, his wife Jane, teenage daughter Judy and son, Elroy. They also had a dog, Astro, and a robot maid, Rosie.
George worked for Spacely’s Sprockets and used to complain about being overworked – he had to push a red button for one hour a week. The program was set in the future – 2062 to be exact – 100 years after the original air date in 1962. In one of the episodes, it was explained that George was forty years old – meaning that he was born in 2022. Additionally, for some unconfirmed reason, it is surmised that George Jetson was born on July 31, 2022 – meaning that he was born earlier this week.
I want to stress that there is no definitive date ever specified as to the actual birthdate of George, but it has been commonly accepted that July 31st is the correct day. For those of us who grew up watching the original Jetsons series, I don’t know that we ever believed that we would have self driving cars, robots helping us in our homes and so many other things that have come to pass since the airing of the series.
I even think that there has been some truth that has come from the series in the way that we view our work lives these days. We want more life balance and many folks still complain about the amount of work that they have to do – a point of view that was pretty foreign in the working world back in the 1960’s.
Things were so much different back then, but we have made so many advances in medicine, technology and other disciplines that we could never really have predicted in the 1960’s. We have even landed men on the moon and returned them safely to earth within a decade of when the Jetsons aired.
The advances we have seen in the last 70 years are still happening at a rate that is difficult to believe. Mobile phones, flat screen TV’s, world changing construction products and even ministries that have changed the landscape of third world countries could never have been predicted, much less achieved, a century ago. Chances are that the changes we will see in the next century will make the Jetsons look like the Flintstones.
Through it all, God is the constant. He is never changing – dependable thousands of years ago and forward into eternity. No matter our human state and what we think we have accomplished in our own power, none of it would be possible with God. Our verse for tonight is from the last book of the Bible, Revelation. John gives us the words of Jesus – an all encompassing promise of God. John tells us, in Revelation 22:13, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
There you have it – Jesus has been there from the beginning and will be there forever. Grammatically, it also means that He will be there every step of the way in between. My encouragement is that no matter what we have accomplished in the world, everything should pale in comparison to our devotion to God. My prayer is that we will all advance as much technologically as we can – bearing in mind that we serve the Creator of everything. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace… and Happy BIRTH day, George Jetson! We can hardly wait for the future.