Thoughts on an 80 MB Hard Drive

It was the early 1990's, though I don't remember the exact year. I was at a friend's house, and he was telling me about how he had recently upgraded his computer. He had doubled his hard drive space, and now he had 300 MB! Yes, 300 megabytes! My computer was limping along with 80MB, but truthfully, that seemed to be enough. I will never forget my comment to him: "300 MB? What will you ever do with that much storage space?" Talk about a lack of vision!

Today is May 21, 2010. With hindsight I can see how shortsighted my comment was. I focused on what was on my hard drive, not what could be on my hard drive. I focused on the present, with no thought to where I could be in the future. It is almost humorous to think now of how far we have come since the days of 80 MB hard drives. Now we speak in terms of gigabytes and even terabytes. Megabytes have become like pennies; sure, they are still part of the currency, but who really takes the time to count them?

There is always a tension between the reality of the day and our vision for the future. I am a very practical person, and I insist that things work in reality, not just in theory. Yet today I make a plug for vision. Twenty years ago my 80 MB hard drive was working fine, thank you. I didn't need anything bigger. Yet in today's world I would have trouble fitting my vacation photos on the drive, let alone the program needed to view them. At Providence we are often caught between the reality of today and our vision for tomorrow. It is important that we do not neglect one for the other, for they are both critical. As we finish up what has been a challenging yet very good school year, I am compelled to look ahead and dream of where we might be in two years and five years and ten years. And when I do look ahead, I am encouraged, for the same hand of God that has guided for eight years will guide for eighteen and for eighty. We will change, but he will not. And in that reality we begin to understand why we must have vision, for even when the shadows of the day make it difficult to look ahead, we clearly see our God, like the pillar of fire that led the Israelites, in front making all things plain.