Where were you in 1957? It was a transformational year! That October, Sputnik became the first satellite ever launched to orbit beyond the earth’s atmosphere. Sputnik was the creation of our Cold War rival, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and it was just the beginning of a new wave of technological changes.

The first cell phone I owned, in 1987, was encased in a box with a long, crinkly cord attached to the hand set. The antenna was a stubby, spiral wire attached to the outside of the car window. Reception was minimal. Look at cell phones today! Most of us could not live without them; our smart Phones and Blackberrys and all those wonderful apps. Where would we be without them?

The first computer for personal use was developed in 1975 and weighed 55 pounds. Now that must have been some kind of a laptop! Today, my laptop weighs three pounds and is about the size of a copy of Time magazine. It is lightning fast and has more memory than I can “shake a stick at.” The Information Highway, the Internet that we rely on today, first became useful in the 1990s and e-mail became the new way of communication, rapidly taking the place of hand-written letters.

Are you on Facebook? It’s hard to believe that Facebook was first created in 2004. Today there are more than 900 million users. Twitter has only been with us since 2006 and now “tweets” are a part of our daily vocabulary. In 2010 more than 65 million tweets were posted every day, and in 2011 that number has increased by 25 percent.

Today commercial satellites circle the globe, providing surveillance, weather information and satellite navigation for our automobiles. Other satellites provide us with a variety of telecommunication options. In the relatively short period –54 years – since Sputnik’s launch, our lives have been radically changed by technology. We will never be the same again.

There is however a darker side to technological progress. The Germans were trying to develop nuclear weapons in the 1930s. The Manhattan Project of the 1940s involving scientists from the United States, Canada and Great Britain countered by developing the first functional atomic bomb. Painfully, we were the first country ever to use an atomic weapon of mass destruction against a civilian population, against our World War II enemy, Japan. The bombing killed, maimed and radioactively poisoned thousands of innocent civilians. But it also abruptly ended the war. The question is still on the table after all these years: “Do the ends justify the means?” A Christian “Just War Theory” would answer no! The Old Testament prophets, the Jesus of the New Testament and the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, I think would all respond with a resounding NO!

Today nine countries, probably 10, possess nuclear weapons, and it is no secret that there are other countries in the process of developing them. Today, nuclear weapons have the capability of destroying most every living thing on the face of the earth 25 times over, within a period of 48 hours. From God’s creation of the earth as we know it, to its current evolutionary state, human technology has evolved to such a point where it is now capable of destroying all of creation in just a matter of hours.

President Barack Obama often used the phrase “change we can believe in” during his run for election. The Easter season raises up another phrase; “Change we better believe in!”

Change is all around us. Technology with all of its blessings also brings curses. And in some ways, it has become our master and no longer our servant.

With the seasonal change from winter to spring, and our liturgical move from Lent to the season of Easter, we are reminded of the truth that in Christ, our lives can be changed for the better just as Christ’s was changed on Easter Day. I wonder though how many Christians really believe their lives can be changed for the better. For those who have difficulty understanding change from the Christian perspective, the church exists as a vigilant reminder that there really is a “change we can believe in.” But like technology, theological change can be found in both good and bad capsules. Too often the world sees the bad capsule of conflict filled with the mean spirited internecine bickering that challenges the Good News of Christ and curdles it so that it cannot be consumed.

The Easter season is a reminder that as Christians we are called to renew our love for God in much the same way that God loves us. And that means we must place God at the center of the circle of our lives. As Christ was raised from the dead, so too can each one of us be emotionally and spiritually resurrected. We can be raised up and removed from those places and things that press upon us and keep us locked up in a daily tomb of darkness and despair.

All we have to do is to remember that in Christ, unlike with technology, change is always for the better. Christ truly is “the change we can believe in.”