For Kirwan Uniting Church's Keep in Touch pew sheet, 17 November 2019

“Thou shalt not covet thy Presbytery Minister’s Tesla” - but I do, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.  (A couple of explanations of terms, for non-Uniting and non-motorhead folk respectively, the Presbytery Minister is a sort-of bishop, and a Tesla is a dead cool electric car.).  Rev Garry took me for a drive. He can just sit there, arms folded, while the car steers itself around corners and roundabouts, and generally behaves like a model citizen except the citizen has got nothing to do with it.  I think KUC can earn brownie points by installing a fast charger in our car park for when Garry visits. Then other electric car owners would know that it’s there, it will come up on their satnav when they look for charging points in Townsville as they swish silently from Port Douglas to Port Macquarie, and we can serve coffee and let them use our toilets, and share the Gospel, while they wait for their batteries to be topped up.

This auto magic is enabled by the array of satellites which circle the globe nowadays. They know where you are, even what you’re doing, and they know how to get you to where you want to be. Like many applied advances in human knowledge, this “surveillance society” can be used for good or ill.

Fear not, as the angels have a habit of saying, Psalm 32 describes an all-seeing, all-knowing but all-loving God whose eye is on us for good.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;

I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.”

Oh, and Teslas will come and find you as you leave the supermarket, no need to trundle your trolley wondering where you parked. Psalm 32 has a verse for that, too.

“Do not be like the horse or the mule,

which have no understanding

but must be controlled by bit and bridle

or they will not come to you.”

I might not have a Tesla, but I sure can recharge my batteries when I read the Psalms. So go on, plug into God’s Word.