Yesterday evening I thought I had broken the internet. We could not get any connection from our house and I wondered if somehow I had pressed the wrong button and deleted the whole of the World Wide Web. Oops!

On reflection, however, it seems that nobody else suffered the same problems and it is likely that our service provider was doing what they periodically do and sending a software upgrade to my router. While it seems to have been successful it did not automatically reboot to finalise the install, it simply stopped working.

There are all sorts of possible analogies I could draw here about us needing spiritual upgrades or reboots but I am going to resist them. Instead I want to reflect on how frustrating and debilitating it was when we could not communicate with the outside world. I had just finished entering yesterday’s blog entry when the system ground to a halt and I had no idea whether it had uploaded successfully. I had sent out some emails and knew that people would be replying, but I could not get the replies. Our children were frustrated that their surfing and gameplaying were curtailed for the evening: “What are we going to do now?”

Grrr.

If I can get that frustrated and upset by loss of internet connection for an evening, how does God feel when I do not communicate with him? When my prayers dry up and my busyness crowds him out, does he feel frustrated? When he has spoken to me in some way and I do not respond does it make him sad?

That challenges me in two ways. One is to renew my resolve to keep the lines of communication open with God through the whole day. The second is to wonder at the possibility that my actions can cause God sadness or frustration. Is that really possible? Is God SO interested in me that my responses to him affect how he feels? 

WOW!! 

and 

OH…


Is TV better than the internet?


10. It doesn’t take minutes to build the picture when you change TV channels.

9. When was the last time you tuned in to “Have I got news for you?” and got a “Error 404” message?

8. There are fewer hideous colour schemes on TV – even on children’s TV channels.

7. The Web keeps the family apart. The family never argues over which Web site we’re all going visit this evening.

6. A remote control has fewer buttons than a keyboard.

5. Even the worst TV shows never excuse themselves with an “Under Construction” sign.

4. “Outnumbered” never slows down when a lot of people tune in.

3. The Web doesn’t care about you as much as TV – The Web doesn’t constantly worry about whether you have had an injury at work . 

2. TV doesn’t give you viruses.

1. You can’t surf the Web from a sofa with a beer* in one hand and Doritos in the other (YET!).


*To accommodate non-beer drinkers, please replace ‘beer’ with whatever happens to be your favourite beverage!