The day started out with my computer becoming infected with a malicious virus that totally incapacitated it; then I put my reading glasses on, and the left side broke off and they went clattering to the floor; next my cell phone was plugged up and charging and as I reached for it, the cord got tangled up in my guitar stand and fell to the floor breaking it.
Hmmm… Yes mama said that there’d be days like this, but don’t you just hate it when you have them?
When I clicked on my favorite online Bible site to look up a verse, a virus immediately launched a pornography site and a flashing screen appeared telling me that my computer had been infected by computer virus worm 32 and it instructed me to immediately download anti-virus software to repair it. All I needed to do was send them my credit card information to make the pornography disappear from my computer.
Yeah right.
I have to admit that it was a fairly creative approach to attach a porn site to a religious site, because anyone that was trying to access a Bible site would not want porn flashing on their screen and would be all the more desperate to try and remove it from their computer.
Now I could have spent some choice moments cursing that little punk who created that virus, or whining and moaning about it, but instead I resigned myself to unplugging my computer and leaving a message for our computer guru to come out to my office ASAP to fix it; I’ll use my laptop in the interim.
When my reading glasses broke, I could have pitched a fit and said a few choice words, but instead I resigned myself to going to the store and buying another pair. I did just that and I’m using them now.
I along with billions of other people rely heavily on my cell phone; indeed it is the only phone that I use. I went to the phone place and was told that according to my contract, if I waited until October 1st, it would cost $50 to upgrade to a new phone, but if I bought one right that moment it would cost $499.
Upon hearing that bad news, my wife who had tagged along with me, immediately lit into that phone salesman in a very heated tone and proceeded to tell him what a rip off that was and blah, blah, blah. I was so embarrassed by her tirade that I wanted out of there pronto, and we left the store and then I had to listen to her railing about it for another ten minutes.
Her tirade didn’t accomplish anything aside from allowing her to vent, and as of this moment I still don’t have a phone. Hopefully today I will go to the Blackberry store, (by myself), and pay whatever I have to pay to obtain a phone and be done with it.
I suppose the moral of this story is that we have a choice whereby we can elect to make an unpleasant situation worse, or we can just work through it and take things in stride. No one likes unpleasant things to happen to them, but they do. To me it reminds me of getting angry when it rains; anger doesn’t stop the rain. Anger cannot solve our other problems either, and if anything just makes matters worse. BTW – Don’t try to call me today…
James 1:19-20
This you know, my beloved brethren. But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.