Meditations from Zion

Sometimes my computer is so messed up, the only thing left to do is reboot: shut it down and restart it. And I’m thinking this was God’s plan as well. Humans needed a a restart, a clear way to reboot the system, a specific point in time to begin fresh. Christ is grace personified.

Ephesians 2:4-5
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

Of course, a reboot will take care of the current glitches but it doesn’t erase all the old stuff. Right now, my computer is running really slow. I kept thinking it was the Internet connection or the router, but I finally had to go poking around the “C” drive to determine what else might be the cause. Since I’m not a computer expert, this investigation is always a little daunting.

As I scrolled through the “Add/Remove programs” section, I found a number of old programs I no longer use. They were just taking up space. They weren’t hurting anything, they were just memory hogs. As a Christian, there are the same kinds of things that are no longer part of my daily life. I don’t need those rule-sets for anymore. So why hang on to them? Click on remove program.

A second place I looked for memory wasters was the files themselves. Since my family sees the desktop as a “family computer,” I have discovered they leave a bunch of unnecessary files on the hard drive. Many of those were easy to dump since they weren’t mine. However, many other files represented special times in my life. But how much is too much to carry around and store? In our basement, I still have my files from graduate school. OK, that was ten years ago. Isn’t it time to take these boxes of old homework, term papers, and dated books to the landfill? Same for the old computer files.

The biggest file folder turned out to be a music folder of my daughter’s (3.5 gigabytes). I vaguely remember trying to help her salvage her I-tunes from a damaged (trojan/virus infected) laptop. In the end, we put them on the desktop for safe keeping, a holding tank. I was reminded of the times I’ve tried to help other people emotionally and taken on their stuff. I’d forgotten that I had to pass that stuff along to the God who is willing to carry it all. Click on delete … empty the wastebasket.

After I did all this deleting and emptying, I did another reboot, a refresh. Computer is running better.

Same for me. First reboot at accepting Christ was life-changing. But I still need to refresh my system along the way. Sometimes I need a technician to help me ferret out the problems, but sometimes, I just need to delete the old stuff: prayer, confession, thanksgiving.