A Hole-y Life

In the last two weeks technology has betrayed me, abandoned me, laughed at me, and enjoyed the senseless tirades with which I responded to its rebellion.

By now I am so beleaguered, I won’t get the sequence correct, but I believe the first act of aggression was my PDA — one of those handheld computers people use to organize, communicate, and entertain. I’d been experiencing intermittent problems for several months, but one night, during an attempt to backup the unit’s data, its screen went black and stayed black. All recovery methods failed, prompting me to search Ebay for a replacement.

Next came the laser printer at the church office. The task was simply to print some mailing labels for the newsletter we were preparing for the post office. The first page of the labels printed without issue until its final two rows, upon encounter with which the printer made a horrifying screech, produced two rows of solid black rectangles, and then unceremoniously shut down, two onboard dummy lights the only visible sign of distress.

Next was our newly-installed satellite television system. So smart I thought I was to recommend to my household that we switch from cable, whose rates had increased four times in the last sixteen months. Though I don’t yet question my suggestion, the morning one of the four TVs we have connected to the system refused to work, my best efforts online and on-hold with tech support not withstanding, had me shaking my head...and nudging a few middle fingers.

This morning in worship the issue was our projection software, the application we use to beam worship visuals, Scripture verses, and song lyrics to the congregation on a large screen. In the middle of my sermon I heard a ping, one you may occasionally have heard from your Windows PC, depending on your setup. To hear any sound at that moment of worship was unexpected and most likely bad news. Sure enough, the worship software had frozen. Dead. Useless. New worship center wallpaper. Our only recourse was to reboot the computer while I proceeded with my message, reading a referenced Bible text, not from the screen, but from, of all things, an actual Bible. It was quite the scene, watching Shari return to the software and then catch up with me in the sermon slides.


You have no cause or intention to care about the arcane minutiae of my recent techno pratfalls, but I share it with you to season your receipt of this piece’s core observation about what we hold on to.

I am a techie, a geek, a gadget freak. I like most anything that glows or goes when pushed, prodded, or powered on. I depend on my gadgets – personal, portable, owned, or borrowed – to inform, delight, and occupy me. Without them I am not on my game, in fact, I'm not sure I have a game without them.

* When the PDA expired, so did I, at least until I recovered from the shock.

* When the “dish” died, it was like our household had lost a quarter of its nine lives.

* And don’t get me started with reading Scripture from an actual Bible!

None of these failures was permanent; in time I discovered costless workarounds for all of them. But the experiences reminded me how fragile are our dependencies. We connect lifelines, expectations, and future plans to people and possessions that don’t always, can’t always meet them. (God, the horrors were I required to pay bills by check through the mail!) What’s worse, most of us have inadequate backup systems, so that, when failures occur, we’re in a mess.

Some years ago one of the church vitality gurus I appreciate used the astrophysics concept of a “wormhole” to describe the present age. Wormholes are theoretical points of rapid transit from one time/space of the universe to another. The church vitality expert said life is changing so fast in the modern era that it’s like we’re in a wormhole. And in the wormhole, only one thing is sure not to change: Jesus. Hold on to no-thing, no one else, because no-thing, no one else is guaranteed to get through unchanged.

What do you hold on to? On what do you depend with an expectation that it will always be there, just as you need it, whenever you need it? Your health? Your financial holdings? Your family? Tomorrow morning’s alarm?

I am not about to surrender my tech connections, but the failures described at this piece’s beginning have served sufficient notice that I need more effective backup measures. I don’t know what’s been swirling around you lately, but chances are the notice thereby served to you is not much different.

We live in a wormhole. It’s good and helpful for us to hold onto each other, but let’s make sure we have our free hands raised and secured.


Pray with me:
In ways I can’t describe and only you can know, you pulled me through another day today, God. Thank you. Today felt different from yesterday. Chances are, tomorrow will feel different still. Disabuse me of temporary, ineffective security blankets. Make clear to me the path and the connection to your Son, the only one guaranteed not to give up, give in, or fail on me. May he always be my dependency, as I live and pray in his name, Amen.