Erasing the Past

Here at the close of 2008, there is the natural tendency to look back over the past year(s) and feel comforted by the successes and good times, or shudder at the defeats and disasters we experienced. We might wish to rewind and erase the past.

Appropriately enough, I was reminded of the difficulty of erasing the past as I spent the last couple of days working on my computer. I saw first-hand why the State Department requires the removal of any hard drives from computers being put out of service and sold or donated. The argument: even if the drive is formatted, sensitive information could still be extracted from the drives. A piece of advice I read somewhere goes something like this: "The only guaranteed way of deleting information from a drive or laptop is with a .45-calibre bullet."

I was only trying to switch browsers and e-mail programs. Everything went well until I tried to transfer the e-mails from my previous program to the new one. I didn't want to keep all the old e-mails, obviously. I hadn't done any serious maintenance work on my e-mail files in 5 or 6 years, so I decided to go through and delete older and unneeded files from the old program. Thousands of files went into the trash---then I went to the new program, hit "transfer" and voilá! Everything I thought I had deleted came pouring into the new program...plus all the junk mail I had deleted as it came in, and I watched as the number of transferred files grew and grew. Final total: over 56,000!  I thought all my past was in the past, but here it was all before my eyes again...junk mail, receipts for mail that had been sent and read, every message I ever sent.

After several attempts, I was able to transfer only a small fraction of those 56,000 files, at least that's all I see when I open my mailboxes. (I really suspect all those others are still lurking in the dark corners of my hard drive.)

I'm thankful that when God says He forgives, He also says that our "....sins and lawless acts I will remember no more." (Heb. 10.17) No "undelete"; no "restore previous configuration."

Names

Sue Farrow

Just a name to everyone reading this outside Madeira, except for four people in the US. To our children, she was "Mrs. Farrow", the headmistress of the British School, where Joy and Jeff went for a few years. Her long bout with cancer ended on Dec. 13.  Every day the newspaper announces funerals, but her name was more than just another name in the paper. To school children, she was "Mrs. Farrow"; to us and her other friends, she was "Sue"--she was a real person, not just a name.

101

Five professional soccer players who attend our church volunteered to go to the prison and have a short game with some of the prisoners, and then use the opportunity to give their testimonies and hand out New Testaments. The director was very open to the idea, and we were given a tour of the prison before the game. After the players gave their testimonies and the prisoners and guards received New Testaments, one of the prisoners requested a large-print Bible, because of his poor eyesight. José Carlos, as representative of the Gideons, made a note and asked the prisoner his name.

"101."

"No, I mean what's your name?"

"101," came the same reply. Another prisoner standing nearby came to the rescue, "Tell him your name. Hey, people on the outside use names!" The poor man was so used to being referred to as a number that he had lost the awareness of his own name.

The Name

"You shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins." A name with meaning, but maybe for most people, no more than just a name. It's the bonds of friendship and relationships that make a name more than just an identifying title. The name might as well be a number, if we have no personal relationship with Jesus, "Savior".

One of the qualities of the Good Shepherd is that "He knows His sheep,... He calls His own sheep by name." (John 10.3). To the overcomer, Christ will give "a new name." (Rev. 2.17) 

When we read of victims of crimes or disasters, and the death toll is given in numbers ... 25, 200, 1350... those people are not even names to us. But each individual is known to God. The question is: how many of them know God through the name of Jesus?

A Christmas Story

In the next few weeks there will be many "Christmas" stories besides the story of the stable in Bethlehem. Most "Christmas" stories will have little to do with what actually happened there in that little town 2000 years or so ago. This is a story told by Paz, one of our church members.

Paz works in the largest and oldest department store in Funchal, and of course, from now until Christmas Eve, she and her colleagues will have more and more customers to deal with, some of whom are a real test of the store employees' patience.

Today, when Paz was totaling up a customer's purchases of Christmas decorations, probably for a Nativity scene, the lady asked Paz for a good discount "because it was for God." Without a second's hesitation, Paz replied, "God doesn't need this. What He wants are repentant hearts!"

"What!?!" exclaimed the customer, in confusion. She had no clue what Paz was talking about. Later a colleague of Paz's wanted to know what she had meant by that statement. Paz simply said, "When things slow down, ask me about it and I'll tell you." That will be the real Christmas story.

Almost a month - Holodomor

I'm mostly writing tonight to let you know that we're still hanging in there. I couldn't begin to explain all the things that have gone on since I last posted, but there was a visit by a Navy ship, an American citizen taken off a cruise ship and hospitalized in serious condition (eventually was able to fly back to the US on oxygen on commercial flights in the company of a nurse sent specially to accompany him), and a Thanksgiving dinner with around 40 Americans. (That was at a restaurant, and not at our house, by the way!)

Being swamped by a backlog of translation work is not news, so I'll say no more about that. We have had visitors at our house and in the church, which was a special blessing. We're practicing two or three times a week for the Christmas cantata, which will be sung in English on Sunday morning, Dec. 21, and in Portuguese on Christmas Eve. There just hasn't been much spare time...and little energy left when there was a free moment.

There are now two men at the prison meeting...both Ukrainians. Nikola had attended earlier in the year, but was released on bond, awaiting trial. He has been tried and sentenced to 6 years, so he's back in prison now, and back in the meetings. Yesterday he told an interesting story:

Ukraine recently commemorated the 75th anniversary of Holodomor, the famine of 1933 caused by Stalin's requisitioning all the food in Ukraine, and causing the deaths of an estimated 5-6 million people! Some estimates go as high as 14 million! The numbers are staggering. The Wikipedia link above gives you a brief look at this genocide. The subject came up yesterday at the meeting, and Nikola said that his grandmother and her parents and grandparents went through that period. They were Baptists, he said, and during the famine, they prayed to God. Neighbors all around them died, but they and other members of their church did not. They did not always have much to eat, but there was always something, and God did not allow them to starve to death. "Food for thought" in these uncertain times the world is facing. Where is our faith?