If someone could travel in time from 2000 years ago or even 200 years ago to now what would they be most amazed to see? The mobile phone, the internet, the contraceptive pill, plane travel perhaps? I reckon it's got to be the supermarket. It's something which has revolutionised our lives and we never even think about it.
It's not hard to find visions in the Bible full of plentiful vines, never ending supplies of milk and honey. In the 13th century the poem Cockayne imagines a time when food is not only readily available but delivered conveniently packaged, with cooked geese and pigs flying and running straight to your door.
In my thinking The mobile phone is glorified talking, The internet is a glorified book, the contraceptive pill is medicine and a plane is another from of transport, all which have existed in some form or another for a long time. But the supermarket is an unimaginable fantasy come true. Food aplenty and not even subject to the seasons. Never again would there be a time of enforced fasting and gathering food is no longer the primary concern of the majority of the population.
So next time your in the humble supermarket imagine what life without it might be like and thank God that the concerns of so many of those in Bible times are something that we have the luxury of never even thinking about.
It's not hard to find visions in the Bible full of plentiful vines, never ending supplies of milk and honey. In the 13th century the poem Cockayne imagines a time when food is not only readily available but delivered conveniently packaged, with cooked geese and pigs flying and running straight to your door.
In my thinking The mobile phone is glorified talking, The internet is a glorified book, the contraceptive pill is medicine and a plane is another from of transport, all which have existed in some form or another for a long time. But the supermarket is an unimaginable fantasy come true. Food aplenty and not even subject to the seasons. Never again would there be a time of enforced fasting and gathering food is no longer the primary concern of the majority of the population.
So next time your in the humble supermarket imagine what life without it might be like and thank God that the concerns of so many of those in Bible times are something that we have the luxury of never even thinking about.
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