In the Year 2525

Here we are at the end of our Church Year and at the beginning of a new one, and I’m thinking about the year 2525.  I never thought I would live to see the day a calendar had the year 2525 on it.  I found it when I “discovered” Microsoft Outlook Calendar on my email.  I became intrigued by the fact that I could push forward to any date.  I thought, “Surely they will go no more than 25 years”; then I thought, “Surely they will stop at the 22nd century.” 

By now just like the music in the Zager and Evans one-hit wonder, I was ratcheted up.  Years sped by in seconds.  Like H.G. Well’s Time Traveler, I broke for the year 2457.  The 500th anniversary of my birth will be on a Tuesday.  (Perhaps Ablaze! will have actually preached the Gospel to one person by then rather than “shared” it with 100 million.)

Having paused to duly note my 500th birthday, I got back in my time machine and finished the journey to 2525.  When I first heard “In the Year 2525” it was 1969.   Even though Johnson was President, Viet Nam was a mess, and racial tensions were high, it was a great time to be alive.  I liked the driving rhythm of the song; even though it was meant to be apocalyptic and hopeless, I was struck most by the date.  Who would dare dream they could predict or even think of the year 2525?

Microsoft does.  I stopped at 2525 for all I know Outlook keeps going ad infinitum.  Our calendar is, I believe, a 14 year cycle, so the program wouldn’t need to be very sophisticated.  It doesn’t take sophisticated technology but audacious thinking to produce this.  Microsoft puts right there in front of me, one just on the cusp of the 21st century, a 26th century day planner.  Hour by hour, I can plan Monday, January 1, 2525.

So I did.  I entered for 12 AM, Monday, January 1, 2525: “Mother ship Returns, Roswell, NM.”  When this computer gets junked, I’ll make sure that bit of information remains.  This hard drive will go into the dustbin of history where I am sure some techno-nerd from The Matrix will find it say in 2143 or 2356, or 2410 while he’s cobbling together some amazing device…say a food replicator.  In any event, he will stumble upon my little entry, and much as evolutionary anthropology does, he will conclude that aliens really did come to earth to Roswell in the 20th  century because someone at the beginning of the 21st was planning to meet them in the 26th.

“In the Year 2525” sometimes has in parentheses after it (Exordium and Terminus) which I think is funny because while it certainly is an end, it’s not a beginning.  No, the song jumps right in at 2525 with no impression of how we got there.  That, however, doesn’t bother me as much as Microsoft does assuming we can plan on getting there.  St. James warns about doing that even for tomorrow.  James 4 says, Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.

This is not natural to fallen men; only the Spirit can work this faith in us.  That’s why the Psalmist prays, and we with him, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

About Paul Harris

Pastor Harris retired from congregational ministry after 40 years in office on 31 December 2023. He is now devoting himself to being a husband, father, and grandfather. He still thinks cenobitic monasticism is overrated and cave dwelling under.
This entry was posted in Ablaze, General. Bookmark the permalink.