Deleted

E-mails are a great way to communicate. But there is also the danger, inherent in any written communication but maybe more-so in the immediacy of the internet, that written words can be ‘read into’ and misunderstood. 

I had such an exchange recently and after a couple of exchanges, we agreed that it had escalated into something never intended on either side and the best thing to do was delete the correspondence and move forward, hopefully a little bit wiser.

So I ticked the boxes and deleted them. Gone.

That is what God does with our sins. We confess them. We are heart-sorry for doing the stuff, saying the stuff, not doing the stuff, having the wrong attitudes, judging, criticising, gossiping, etc etc. We all do it and need to come back to Him time after time.

And time after time, he ticks the box and clicks delete.

‘For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.’ Psalm 103.

As far as the east is from the west. He has removed our sins from us. He has forgiven us completely, and deleted them from his memory. 

It isn’t God who haunts us with recriminations, pointing the finger and telling us how rubbish we are. God urges us to come to him and confess, urges us with inner prompts and through our consciences, but he never condemns, never writes us off.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us. 

Praise the Lord. Indeed, praise the Lord.

Of Hackers and Headaches

The rain has returned – summer showers really. The raspberries I picked yesterday – huge and juicy – were also very wet, and needed to be sorted when I got them inside. I’ve learned the hard way – leave one that’s about to go mouldy in the bottom of the box and many will be mouldy in the morning. 

It’s amazing how one bad rasp can spoil the box. 

It’s also amazing how a few bad people can spoil the convenience of the internet. Today, we were hacked, and the result of that hacking has been some financial loss. It could have been worse, but no loss feels good, and once hacked, it’s hard to trust the emails that come in from legitimate sources.

This is Monday, though, and I want to avoid that Monday, Monday feeling, so I’m going to end on a note of praise and optimism. Much is said about the British National Health System. It comes in for vitriolic criticism for a whole host of reasons. But I have nothing but praise for the NHS, and here’s an example of why.

I have been fighting a virus for a couple of weeks. During that time, I also bumped my head, and when you’re on a blood thinner you don’t want to do that. As the days went by, I noticed an increasingly severe headache, until last night it was so bad I thought that surely something sinister was going on inside my brain. 

At about 4 am I emailed my consultant, who is a world expert in the condition I have, and told him what was going on. I fell asleep, and when I woke again at 7 am I had a reply from him, and an appointment with him at the hospital at 2 pm. Not only did he squeeze me in, he also got me a CT scan at 3. He called about 7 with the result – nothing to worry about, praise the Lord.

Well, I praise the Lord for his healing, and I praise the Lord for my consultant, and I praise the Lord for the NHS, whose very existence means that when you are already anxious about a health issue, you don’t have to worry as well about a horrendous bill.

I am counting my blessings tonight, and one of them is the NHS.