In the Office Again

Do you have back to school blues or are you happy it has started?  For me, I hated school.  I could not wait for graduation May 27, 1971.  It took forever.  I hated homework.  I hated reading.  I hated writing.  I enjoyed history.  I loved math, algebra, electric computation (forerunner of computers) and football.  I wished I had enjoyed dating, but I could not buy a date.  My ex sister-in-law convinced a girl to date me. Did I say I hated school?

With that said, I returned to school in September 1983 at the University of Montevallo.  Having the call of the Lord resonating in my heart, I walked onto the hallow ground and cobbled streets of the Quad, the Tower, and Palmer Hall.  There I encountered Ms. Cobb; her husband was from Demopolis, who asked if she could help me.  I must have looked as a “plowboy” come to town.  I did not know it, but the Lord did because it was orientation.

I was eager to share my exciting call to minister and returning to school to help me be a pastor.  I realized she was one of the liberated people of the eighties and she was not impressed with my call, but she was very helpful.  She taught English and helped me to write when I attended the Harbert Writing Center, a place for those whose English skills were nonexistent.

I was very ignorant about writing and college and Ms. Cobb saw me as a project to teach me the ways of the secular university and launch me into the agnostic twentieth century.  She did enlighten me on Pell Grants.  These grants were money that the government loans to students without having to pay the money back to the government.  Boy, she was nice, liberated woman.

A couple of years later I was going to Palmer Hall to pick up my Pell Grant.  The lines were long with students getting their money.  The line reached from the second floor, down the stairs, through the main lobby, onto the steps, and out into the streets. These were transitional days from punch cards to computers.

It was hot in Palmer Hall.  The temperature was hot, and students were getting hot under the collar due to the slowness of those operating the computers.

I finally reached the top of the stairs and could see the payroll window.  People were angry so I decided to make a joke about computers.  I said in my preaching voice, “Boy ain’t the technological age wonderful in how it speeds things up or we would be here pulling cards all night.”

After that, everyone started telling computer jokes and the line moved quickly.  When I was close to receiving my check, a woman behind the counter said she wanted to talk to me in her office.  She looked upset. How did she know me?  My first thought was, “What I have I done now?”  Trouble follows me as a dirty cloud follows Pigpen.  You know the dirty little follow from the Peanuts cartoon.

With high anxiety, I entered onto “the carpet” of her office.  She closed the door and said, “Thank you for what you did.”  I was clueless as to what I did so I asked her what I did.

She said, “You took what was a very volatile situation and made everyone laugh.  The girl doing the student loans was nervous and the more upset the students became, the more mistakes she made.  Your smile and your humor put everyone at ease.  You took the attention off the computer operators.”

I told the woman that it was better to have a smile and share it than be one to gripe and complain.  It was a joy to get money to follow God’s call upon my life.

Author and Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe writes, Joy takes the burden out of service.  The Joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10). God loves a cheerful servant as well as a cheerful giver . . . God wants His family to be happy, and this means that each member must contribute to joy.

Sorry the System is Down

Several years ago, while returning from a conference in Montgomery, Alabama I made a pit stop at a service station across from the Alabama Air National Guard.  It was the place that former President George W. Bush did his flying while serving in the National Guard.  I always stop there.  I love watching the planes.

As I drove into the parking lot, I noticed that there were several people at the gas pumps, a tanker truck was filling the store’s holding tanks, and people were doing as I was.  I noticed one of the clerks standing in the door talking with a customer.  It’s nothing out of the ordinary, I witnessed this before at this particular station.

As I approached her, I say excuse me.  She said, “I’m sorry the station’s system is down.”  I thought she was referring to the gas pumps because the external gas tanks were being filled.

I told her that I wanted to buy a soft drink and a candy bar.  She said she could not make any transactions because the system was down.  I told her that surely, she could figure the cost of a soft drink and a candy bar.  She said she couldn’t.

All of a sudden, my mind raced back some twenty to thirty years earlier at a Sears Department store in Vestavia, Alabama.  On that day, there was a thunderstorm and the electricity had been off for just a few moments.  I was in the check out and the clerk said she could not check me out because the register was not working.  Now remember, this was when scanning items was in its infancy.  I noticed that the old cash register was still at the checkout counter.  I asked the clerk if she could use the old register or a calculator.  Her answer shocked me.  She said she did not know how to use them.

Another thought I had was an episode at the old Food World grocery store in Demopolis, Alabama.  For years I would do grocery shopping late at night.  Being from “the sticks” in Chilton County, we had to travel thirty-five miles to the Food World in Pelham, Alabama.  Not getting out much, we would make the trek about once a month throwing in an opportunity to eat at Quincy’s Steak House.  We just got into the habit of going at night.

At the Demopolis Food World, we were in the checkout line around ten pm when the Food World central office in Birmingham shut down all computers to do a recalculation or calibration.

It was mass chaos.  Some folks were in the process of checking out.  All open registers were two to three deep with buggies, and no one knew when the system would reload.  Several people got irritated, left their buggies, and went home.  The system came back up just as some were exiting.

When I wrote this article, Pam, the Associational Missions secretary was having trouble with logging church letters.  The Adobe Reader system continuous shuts down.  I spent thirty minutes with her trying to update or reinstalling the Adobe Reader.  Our office work depends on the system working.  The process of updating and adding programs to the system never ends.

After the system shut down in Montgomery, I read this statement in the October 1, 2012 issue of Time Magazine: “Technology makes us forget what we know about life.”  Our technological know-how is preventing us from the everyday know how of living.

These system shutdowns remind me of predictions of the future from preachers, writers, and old folk in the past.  They said that the Bible speaks of a time when there will be plenty, but no one can buy.  The service station had plenty of merchandize, but no one could purchase it.  It is frightening see how easy the world as we knew could quickly shut down.  With each passing day and each advancement in technology, we become more vulnerable to system shutdowns.  When one thinks of that possibility of vulnerability, how easy would it be for a person or group to disable and dismantle life as we know it?

Life is not about systems.  Systems fail.  We must remind ourselves that we cannot allow systems to uneducate or dumb down us about life and how to survive.  The Scriptures remind of a time when systems fail:

 

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine (Revelation 6:6 KJV).

 

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:  And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.  Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six (Revelation 13:16-18 KJV.)

 

These verses show us that in the future there will be plenty to buy, but most will not have the resources or opportunity.

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse says the above verse means, “The poor are getting poorer; and the rich are still able to retain their luxuries.”  He continues, “One of the great criticisms of the present time is there is scarcity in midst of plenty.  This is the situation which will be accentuated a thousandfold when the Antichrist begins his reign.  It is social maladjustment.”

Dr. M.D. DeHann says that the oil and the wine are symbols of wealth and the wealthy will have sufficient food for a time.  The poor will give a day’s wages for wheat and barley and the rich will be left untouched until the money is gone. 

Dr. DeHann wrote these words in 1948.  Dr. Barnhouse wrote his in 1971.  We are witnessing seeing signs today.

Confession is Good for the Soul

It is funny the people you meet that stick in your mind and things that call them to mind.  The other day, while working on the laptop computer, I kept using my cell phone as a mouse.  The laptop has a pad that you use, but I had placed my cell phone beside the laptop and unconsciously I would move the phone while looking at the screen only to realize the cursor was not moving.  “Duh”, I said to myself.  I finally placed the cell phone to another place on the desk. 

Then, I thought of how many times I have tried to open the office, the house, the post office box by mashing my key with my thumb.  Talk about being programmed.  My Honda key unlocks my car, opens the trunk and blows the horn, so naturally I try my others key the same.

There is something else.  Did you know that a cordless phone will not change the channels on the television?  I know I have tried it several times.  I would point the antenna at the TV and push channel 4.  Next, I would bump the phone to remind the batteries to work.  It is funny when you realize just how dumb you are.

I know that you can program the DVD player remote to change TV channels and you can program the TV remote to change the DVD, but I do not think you can program the cordless phone to control the DVD player or TV.

They say confession is good for the soul.  I confess.  There are too many gadgets and too many buttons to push.  We live in a push button world.  What was life like before push button gadgets?

Speaking of gadgets, we were actually able to carry on intelligent and extended conversations, drive at normal speeds on the highways, hear sermons, and attend meetings without interruption before cell phones.  Do you remember dial telephones?

That brings me back to people sticking in you mind.  I remember working with a guy named “Radiator”.  It was an odd name and Radiator was an odd kind of man.  He wore coveralls and his hair was never combed and looked as he had just gotten out of bed.

He did odd things.  Once hearing of a submerged fishing boat, sunk by a floating log, he inquired of its location.  A day or two later he had retrieved the sixteen 16’ fiberglass runabout with a Mercury outboard.  He patched the hull, reworked the outboard and started fishing and skiing.

On another occasion he had a Volkswagen bus that had a nut on the rear axle that would not stay tightened so he welded the nut to the hub and axle.  He had a knack with gadgets.  It was 1971.  The company where Radiator and I worked said employees were making too many outside calls.  Management placed a lock in the first hole of the rotary dial of all the telephones in the plant.  Our foreman was bragging how outside calls had ceased and people were working more.  Radiator said he could make a call without dialing.  The foreman, who thought Radiator a nut, argued that Radiator could not.  It was very interesting for an 18 year old boy to hear two grown men arguing like grade school boys over a dare, but I listened.

Radiator asked the foreman for his home phone number.  The foreman told him then Radiator proceeded to lift the receiver and with his pointer finger push the buttons in the receiver cradle with a Morse code rhythm of the numbers given by the foreman.  Radiator handed the phone to the foreman which heard ringing and then his wife answer the phone.  The know-it-all foreman got a quick lesson from the gadget man on how the dial was a circuit breaker that when dialed broke the circuits in a systematic rhythm determined by the hole dialed.

Radiator was smarter than he appeared.  When I think of it, John the Baptist, being a little odd, was wiser than he appeared.  I guess with my gadget dilemmas, I am dumber than I appear. 

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16 KJV)

Serpents know the principles of survival and the softness of doves invites all to know them.  In a push button world, God’s truth obligates the disciple to send the message and the seeker to listen.