The Miraculous Part 3
July 8, 2025
The Miraculous Part 3
As a little boy in the 1950s, television was a new phenomenon. Our TV was in a beautiful wooden cabinet with doors. The first TV screens were microscopic compared to the massive flat screens of today, but that little screen drew our complete attention.
Among the shows on early TV was “Captain Video and his Video Rangers,” a pioneering TV series (1949-1955) which depicted spaceships and many futuristic gadgets. The captain traveled around the universe with his rangers to defeat evil. One of the things about the spacemen’s artillery was the raygun. I recall asking my parents how the raygun worked; their answer was pretty sophisticated. They told me that it had concentrated energy, and if the person pulled the trigger, it shot out so powerfully that it could paralyze the enemy. Unheard-of things like rayguns and spaceships astounded me. To me they were miraculous. Captain Video and His Video Rangers featured a variety of futuristic gadgets and weaponry designed to capture opponents rather than kill them. Some of these fictional weapons included:
Cosmic Ray Vibrator: A device capable of paralyzing its target using a static beam of electricity— the current day laser.
Atomic Disintegrator Rifle: Despite its name, this weapon was used for capturing (stun gun).
Electronic Strait Jacket: This device was used to confine captured enemies (another type of stun gun).
Opticon Oscillometer: a long-range X-ray (the GPS).
Discatron: a portable TV screen and intercom (current day TV screens on watches).
Radio Scillograph: a palm-sized two-way radio (wristwatch telephones).
Every one of these devices, including spaceships, has not only come true but has also developed beyond science fiction.
Imagine if we were to travel back in time to the era of Columbus. What if we told Columbus and his crew that one day we would have rays that would scan our bodies to detect illnesses? What if we told them that there would be buggies that drove without horses? What if they learned that everyone could tell a machine in the “buggy” where to go, and it would take them there? What if we told them that there would be machines far more exact than his compass that would steer the ship at night and warn of storms, other ships, and bad weather ahead? What if we told them that machines would one day fly and take people across the Atlantic in 5 hours instead of weeks on a ship? What if we told them humans would one day walk on the moon? How would they handle it when we told them there would one day be telephones, radios, photography, movies, and computers? I suspect they would meet all these with disbelief and call them miracles.
The question I have for reflection is: In 200, 400, or 1,000 years from now, what will be their norm that we consider impossible today? Could it be that if we develop and evolve, that humanity has all that is needed to live longer with a higher quality of being than we can imagine? It seems it just takes time for the miraculous to manifest.
Dear God,
As we grow and learn about the earth and its cosmos, I pray that we find all that will bring us into our stride, including a way to make peace. Amen
