Life’s Little Annoyances (or “Why Blogging Will Be Intermittent”)
March 10, 2005
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Blogging, Technical Functions : Trackback,
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Due to problems with my satellite-based Internet connection after the company repointed the dish to a new satellite, blogging is going to be tenuous for about a week.
The Bible admonishes us to not beef about how things were better in the former days (Ecclesiastes 7:10), but I’ll tell you, I can’t remember the former days’ customer service being as bad as today’s is. My wife’s car is going in for repair tomorrow for the fifth time after the catalytic converter was replaced and the fix left us with an exhaust system that now clangs as much as Paul’s noisy cymbals in 1 Corinthians 13. Today our heating folks came out for about the dozenth time to address a pressure problem in the system that was so noisy it sounded like the gates of hell were prevailing. And of course, when I got an e-mail from my satellite Internet provider saying I was one of the “lucky” ones to get moved over to the new satellite, I had a prophetic moment in which I saw an apocalypse.
And now, the revelation: The contracted “re-pointer” showed up as darkness was falling, forgot his software at the last location (in another state, of course), and then fibbed a bit when telling me that it was okay that my signal strength was now about 25% less than it was before he “fixed” things for me. Seven hours of phone time on hold with the satellite Internet provider later and it looks like I may get someone out on Monday to fix what shouldn’t have been botched in the first place. Worse still, the customer service folks at the satellite Internet company left a message saying they needed me to call them back with the phone number of the guy THEY contracted. I only waited on hold for fifty minutes that time to give them the information they should have had in the first place!
It sure seemed like people took greater pride in their work even a decade ago. Now I don’t even bother to look around for help in a department store anymore, I just stand in some conspicuous place and yell really loud, “Does anyone work here?” I don’t know what all of them are doing hiding in the back rooms, but I doubt it’s planning a revolution.
Now, of course, my wife is the sanity in the family. She reminds me that I talk about the Church in this country needing a little bit more persecution in order to keep us honest; meanwhile, flaky Internet access, a botched car repair, and a heat pump put together in a factory on a Monday by less-than-sober workers is enough for me to pop a blood vessel in my head. Some martyr I’ll be.
She has a point.
We are spoiled. We have never seen real persecution in the country. Martyrdom never crosses our minds except when the new company handbook says, “Absolutely no Footprints in the Sand posters in cubicles.” Then we raise a stink. Or we read David Limbaugh’s book, Persecution, and we come to the conclusion that we are not so much to love our enemies as to sue, sue, sue ‘em in a court of law until we get our way.
I don’t know the solution to this wimpiness that afflicts us in this country, but when I read about Paul and Silas in stocks in a dank, dark dungeon—all the while singing hymns and praying joyfully—I think how low my experience is. If Paul had been standing over my shoulder while I was stuck on the phone for seven hours with customer service, he would probably be thinking, What a marvelous tool this telephone is for reaching the lost for Christ.
So there you are, a real study in contrasts.
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You know, I have had these same thoughts. In fact, I had a dream last night that my family and my wife’s family was having to through the countryside defending ourselves from an enemy that invaded the US. It was a very vivid dream, with me defending my family at ever turn, having to shoot many men. At one point, I killed a few men in this house we entered. As I searched the house, I found a wife of the enemy I just killed. She was holding her two children. I started to tear up and simply told her war was hell, and that she is safe now.
It wasn’t a pleasant dream.
Keep up the good posts.
Dan,
The thought has occured to me many times as well.. I think, “here we are sitting in church without a clue, we just have no idea about how much grace God has poured out upon us..we don’t really grasp the freedom we have in America. I used to think as I sat in church or Sunday School back in the days of the “Cold War” of those behind the Iron Curtain, meeting outside in mid-winter in the forest to worship our Lord. If God is just, I trust we will be asked to give an account of what we did with the freedom He has blessed us with.
Keep up the good work,
Brad
I used to get Richard Wurmbrand’s “Jesus to the Communist World” publication. Reading the stories of Soviet Christians locked away in mental institutions just tore me up. For a while I wrote letters to these folks, but always wondered if any of them ever got through.
Even just twenty years ago they would tie up Albanian Christians in heavy burlap sacks and soak them in freezing water. If a few drowned it was considered no loss.
Just today I was lamenting that our health insurance looks to be going up yet again, for the very amount I had saved by getting rid of my satellite TV. I don’t ascribe to Left Behind eschatology, but I can see how easy it would be for Christians in this country to take the mark without thinking if it was marketed as a health care issue. If it ever comes down to that, many of us in this country are going to be in a world of hurt.
Honestly, despite the fact I’ve done survival camping on less than a pound of equipment and packed food, there’s no way most of us would make it through a winter if it were to play out that way. My wife and I are making plans to get completely off the grid, but our support systems are so reliant on our current societal constructs that someone somewhere will always have their hooks into us.
It’s tough to admit this, but as much as I think times will get more rough for believers in this country, I also think most of us will go down in the first wave. We just aren’t as tough (or prepared) as we think we are.
Not trying to be a scaremonger. Just trying to tell it like it is.