“For what credit is there if, when
you sin (hit your thumb with a hammer) and are harshly treated, you endure it
with patience? But if when you do what
is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God” (I Peter 2:20). “Be angry, and yet do not
sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an
opportunity” (Eph. 2:26-27).
Hey gang, I
have learned in the past two months that these two verses go together. I have also learned what the person who
coined the saying, “if it works, do not fix it”, meant. I have also learned that I do not have the
slightest clue what to do when one of the weird screens comes up on the
computer that I have never seen before and has no connection with what I am
trying to do!
If it does
not disappear when I re-boot, I am dead in the water until I can call my
friendly computer guru or find a six or seven- year- old lad or lassie that
knows far more about such things than I will ever know.
When our
computer internet and phone provider recently merged with another company and
we were advised that we must upgrade our equipment to gain all the wondrous
advantages the new company was offering, and the carrot was that it would cost
less money and make it much more convenient, it sent shivers down my
spine!
My question
to the upgrade describer – how much pain and agony is attached to getting all
the bugs worked out and until my level of understanding is acclimated to using
the new system? Oh, no worry! This is a tested and proven bug free mechanism
that even an 83-year-old that does not understand the “For Dummy’s books’, can
become proficient within minutes.
After
several weeks, and more than twenty hours of listening to a multitude of so
called technicians, my bride packed up the entire system and went back to the
place it was purchased and announced I do not leave here until this thing is
doing what you said it would do.
Okay, what
does that have to do with the Scripture of the day? First, I thought I had my anger totally under
control and could handle about any circumstance. Wrong!
I wanted to throw the computer down the basement stairs. I also learned that my patience was not as
rock-solid as I thought it was.
Perhaps
that is what this whole trip through the wilderness was all about. I must confess, I did indeed go to bed very
angry some nights and I must admit that my patience was at best – tarnished!
The point my
young friends, keep in mind the devil waits for his chance to turn your
patience control to ‘tilt’ mode and stoke up the anger that you thought you had
total control. But I also learned that, if I take a moment or two and say,
“Okay, God, if you can’t handle this we are both in trouble”. He has never failed!
The computer
is working fine, my anger has gone underground again waiting for another
opportunity to test me and see, if I learned anything from the last time God
bailed me out!
Blessings,
Gramps
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