Bad Hard Drive and Flat Bicycle Tires

• Have you ever had the feeling that the devil was putting quite a bit of effort trying to rattle your cage?
• Have you ever been able to just look at what was meant to stir up your emotions and just chuckle?
• Have you ever been so assured that God is for you that no one and no thing was going to be able to shake you?

These questions provide the backdrop for my past couple weeks. For the past few months I've been working on trying to build a web site for my wife. As I've noted before, she is an aspiring writer and the Lord has thrown doors wide open for her to pursue writing a book. You'll have to visit Kerry's blog to find out more about it because the web site is out there, but not quite completed yet... still.
And I have been working on developing a web site for our church (no small endeavor) and it is in a similar state to my wife's web site. It is out there, but not quite completed yet... still.
The partially complete state of these web sites is because I work on them in my spare time (if there really is such a thing), which is that couple hours on occasional evenings and weekends when we aren't busy with something else. Anyone with kids, especially high school age kids, would likely know what I'm talking about...

So anyway, lets just say I've been plugging away at these things. Then on Thursday evening of the week before last I came home and my computer was acting very strangely and then pretty much just hung. Okay, savvy Windows user that I am, I reboot, or should I say attempt to reboot, because it restarts, but Windows does not start up and it provides this nice error saying that a major part of the operating system fails to initialize. Not a good thing. This is about the point where one (me) would normally want to scream "Aaaaaarrrrrrgh" and throw the thing out a window. And not that that would really help anything. But as the feelings of frustration started to rise, I just felt this little chuckle inside and the frustrations quickly subsided. To God be all praise. I have to confess that this is NOT how I would have responded in the past. But God gives us grace for each day and each trial in each day, if we will just accept it from Him. Well to attempt to keep this somewhat short, a new hard drive, a new load of the operating system, and a couple days, and a LOT of God's grace I was able to be back up and running and also able to recover the important data off of the failed drive, including all the developed web page files I had been working on. Thanks be to God.

A desk job for work, life, etcetera, keeps me plenty busy and the nice cold snowy winter we've been enjoying (honestly) has made it difficult to get regular exercise. This means my weight goes up, thanks to the now slower metabolism, and my endurance goes down. Well, last summer I started riding my mountain bike during lunch. This was good. I felt better and started losing some of the michelon of the middle. All good. Well winter hit and the bicycle hasn't seen much more use than the motorcycle. Until yesterday.
The weather has been pretty decent so I decided it was time to start my lunchtime rides again any day I could squeeze them in. The ride went well. I brought my bike up to my office. A while later, close to time to leave, I noticed that the front tire had gone flat since I had gotten back. I thought it strange because I had only ridden on the roads. Sure enough, not one big thorny sticker, but two. (We call them goat heads because there are two long thorns attached to a base so they look kind of like a little goat head.) In replacing the inner tube, 'cause it's pretty much shot, I find there are cactus thorns in the tire too, with my finger. That smarts! Got through that. Started checking the rear tire, guessing what I would find and I was not disappointed. Took the bike home and spent half an hour repairing the rear inner tube and reinflating the tire. Good to go! Until this morning. I went out (almost running late for a telecon) grabbed the bike to put it on the rack and noticed... guess what... the rear tire I had "fixed" last night was flat. I just had to laugh. God gave His grace.

I relate these things because God in His mercy and grace has been teaching me (for a long time 'cause I can be a slow learner) about how to live James 1:2-4 "Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations. Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience. But let endurance and steadfastness and patience have full play and do a thorough work, so that you may be [people] perfectly and fully developed [with no defects], lacking in nothing." (from the Amplified Bible)

It is through the things we are allowed to experience that we learn how to look at the circumstance(s) and laugh (or sometimes not) and yet give praise to God our Father that He finds us worthy to teach us how to walk through without becoming overwhelmed or despairing. My God is not cruel. Rather, He is a far better Father than I have been or can be. He knows what we need to learn and how we need to learn it and then He takes the time to take us through. Through our "Red Sea," through our "Jordan Crossing," through the land of giants, through the valley of the shadow of death, to the place or rest He promised He would bring us to.

I know my God is for me, so who can be against me and prevail?

May you be blessed.