Tired of that 208.something.something address that could go away on 30 seconds’ notice? Here’s your fix. Please update your bookmarks to https://dfarq.homeip.net. This registration comes from DynDNS, a dynamic DNS service that’s pretty highly regarded.
Down the line I may go ahead and get a fixed IP address and register a domain name, but this is a quicker fix. It could take a week for that stuff to take effect; this literally took me a minute once I got around to it.
R.I.P.: Free Brightmail
Brightmail, we hardly knew ye. I got notice last week that Brightmail’s free service is finito, as of the end of this month. Another effort to sell product by giving it away for private use goes away. That’s kind of a shame, because Brightmail did a decent job of filtering spam. I got one of my last Brightmail reports this afternoon, and it blocked 14 pieces of spam. Thanks guys. I’ll miss you.
So… I’ve got about three weeks to get something else going. The combo of Fetchmail, Procmail, and a nice anti-spam Procmail recipe on my Linux server ought to do the trick. I’ve done some reading up on it. Of course I’ll be letting you know how that goes. Configuring that stuff isn’t necessarily for the timid, but the price is right and many people report blocking about 95% of spam with their setups. Brightmail, by contrast, blocks about 70%.
Of course I’ll let you know how it goes.
So Dave, how do I use this site?
I’ve tried to make this look as much like the old one, but there are some new features here. Please give the Comments feature a look. If you’ve got something you want to say, just click Comments and write away. No registration required. Punch in your name, and if you want, your e-mail address and Web address. Spam-filter your e-mail address if you want. Or leave it out entirely. Use an assumed name if you want. I think my system logs an IP address somewhere, so don’t go posting death threats, but aside from that, comments can be anonymous. For privacy hounds, e-mail is a greater threat to your privacy than the Comments section. I can find an awful lot about you from your e-mail headers. (Not that I bother–who’s got time for that?)
So when should you e-mail me? If I’m not talking about what you want to talk about. I read all my mail, but I can’t always be timely about it. There are days when I leave here at 7 or 7:30 a.m. and then I don’t get home until after 9 p.m. On those days, the last thing I feel like doing is reading a ton of e-mail, so it sits while I fix something to eat or listen to music or read a book (or all three). I don’t read my personal mail from work. But I have been known to take a quick peek at the site from work during breaks or slow periods. I’ll read the comments and sometimes fire off a response.
Basically, I’m trying to encourage you to use the Comments section. It’s getting harder and harder to deal with all the e-mail. Comments will get a faster response from me, if they’re necessary. And it saves me the time of posting them, which is good. Lively topics can quickly bury me in e-mail; I’ve started to avoid such topics for exactly that reason. But I do like lively discussion, so this is a nice solution to that problem if people use it.
One last thing on Comments. Please keep it clean. I can’t imagine 11-year-olds being interested in the topics here, but I want the content to be appropriate for all ages. I know I’ve dropped an F-bomb here and there, especially really early on back on my original site whose contents are temporarily unavailable. I started to watch that after a schoolteacher commented about that. Greymatter can optionally filter words out. For the time being, I have that turned off. I’ll turn it on if I have to.
You’ll also notice a Karma rating. If you read something and really like it, click the little plus sign. If you hate it, click the minus sign. If you’re neutral or indifferent, leave it alone. It may be possible down the line to write a script that tallies up the karma and gives a “Best of” based on your votes. I haven’t looked into it yet, but I think I’d like that. Short-term, I look at that to see how I’m doing. If certain topics consistently get me negative votes, I’ll probably avoid them. If a topic gets tons of positive votes, I’ll probably head that direction some more. It’s just a quick, easy, anonymous way to give a little feedback.
The search engine works, but there isn’t much to search yet, obviously. Performance may lag once there are a lot of entries, but that’s curable. Down the line I can always throw more CPU at that problem. On the plus side, the search engine searches both my entries and my comments.
The site’s very unfinished, as you can see. I plan to add more features as I think of them. I’m open to ideas of course. This is a community.
Not sure what we’ll get back to tomorrow. I’ll come up with something.
My apologies to those whose e-mail I haven’t answered yet. I just haven’t been up to it. See Sunday’s post. Later this week, I hope, I’ll get caught up.
Treat wrist pain naturally
Do you have a weird pain in your lower arms? Do your wrists tingle? Are your wrists tight? It’s possible to treat wrist pain naturally.
I’ve heard two people describe these things in the past month, now a friend’s written the same thing on his Web site. Of course, my wrists are notorious. They effectively ended my book writing career. Our problems came from typing.
First things first: Make some adjustments. Sit down and put your hands at your keyboard. Lower your chair until your legs make an upside-down L. Now do your arms make an L shape? If not, you absolutely need to get a keyboard drawer and/or another chair. Get one with adjustable armrests so you can support your arms. Rest them on your armrests lightly. Trust me: It’s cheaper than treatment.
Go see your doctor. Make sure he’s not knife-happy. He can recommend wrist supports, splints, and other treatments that help. You should always try that stuff first. The surgery can have side effects. To my way of thinking, it’s better to leave your body how God designed it and try to help it heal itself.
There are no effective drug treatments for repetitive stress injuries, other than painkillers. Talk to your doctor about vitamins.
Check all this stuff that follows out with your doctor first. This was the advice I got from reading several different books, and it worked pretty well for me.
The standard treatment for repetitive stress injuries is vitamin B6. Don’t take more than 200 mg of it a day–that may have harmful side effects. 100-125 mg is a good dosage; it leaves enough leeway that you can still take a multivitamin and/or a B complex, plus whatever small amounts of B6 you get from diet.
B6 works best in the presence of the other B vitamins, so you should also pick up a B complex. Precise dosage doesn’t seem to matter much. I buy whatever B complex I can find and take one capsule.
You can also complement B6 by taking a source of Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is “good fat,” while Omega-6 is “bad fat.” Omega-3 is used for, among other things, nerve regeneration. The best sources of Omega-3 are fish oil or flaxseed oil. I take 1000 mg of either of them daily. Dietary sources of Omega-3 include eggs from free-range chickens and fatty fish like salmon. But a free-range egg gives you 100 mg. So it would appear that two eggs for breakfast and salmon for lunch and dinner would still leave you a bit short. Plus eating all those eggs will give you other problems. Buy the free-range eggs anyway, because of the improved nutrition over the cheap caged eggs, and eat more salmon, but don’t expect miracles from them.
Some people add 400 mg of magnesium to the mix. Magnesium is an anti-inflammatory.
In addition to the standard-bearers (B6, B complex, Omega-3, Magnesium) I’ve also used alfalfa and MSM. Alfalfa’s a good source of a large number of vitamins and minerals, which is why that works. MSM is also a good anti-inflammatory, and some people believe the body uses MSM to regenerate nerves and other tissues. I don’t think anyone totally understands how or why MSM works. The first bottle of MSM I got billed it as a natural painkiller, and while its effect wasn’t like, say, aspirin, it did seem to calm down the nerve that RSI irritates.
As far as exercise, there are stretches your doctor should be able to show you. A friend I know who’s a physical trainer says the first thing you should do any time you feel pain is to figure out what hurts, then do the opposite. I used to keep a baseball bat next to my computer. When I’d tighten up, I’d take the bat, walk into an open area, and swing the bat around for a while. If you swing the bat with proper technique, where you rotate your wrists and at the end of the swing your right hand is actually out front (or your left hand, if you bat left-handed), you’ll loosen your wrists up pretty quickly. People gave me funny looks when they saw the bat next to the computer, and funny looks when they saw me swinging a bat in the hallway or in the living room, but it helped. Find an exercise that tends to make your wrists pop. It’ll help.
How I set up Greymatter for Weblogging
How I set up Greymatter for Weblogging. First things first: I’m sure everyone’s asking how much hardware you need. I’m using a Pentium-120 with 64 megs of RAM, and it’s plenty fast most of the time. It takes a little while to regenerate all the templates, but other than that it’s mostly sitting idle. Any Pentium-class machine should be plenty. I’d be hesitant about using a 486 because the templates will take an awfully long time to rebuild. Remember, Greymatter’s written in Perl, and Perl’s an interpreted language. Interpreters are slow for the same reason emulators are slow–the translation is real-time.
But Greymatter offers advantages. You can control your destiny. You have total control over your site–it’s running on your Linux box. And you’re free from FrontPage’s tyrrany. Did I hear cheers? Most importantly for me, I set the clock. I can set the clock ahead a couple of hours, make my post at 10 p.m., and it’ll be dated the next day. That can only mean… The return of the infamous Farquhar Time Machine. I can start sleeping in again! Or go to work earlier… Hey, I can start sleeping in again!
Anyway, I had the Pentium-120 already configured with Mandrake 7.2, but I discovered Mandrake 7.2 in high security mode doesn’t seem to allow Web traffic from the outside world. So I installed Mandrake 7.2 again in low-security mode. I used a server installation. The only things I really cared about were Apache and Perl, but I didn’t feel like de-selecting everything. Both will be in there by default. I think Perl’s part of the Development group during installation. I’m not sure what group Apache is in. I don’t recommend running XFree86 on your server. Those memory resources are better used for server purposes. Oh, and one last thing: Don’t use DHCP. Give your Web server a local, static IP address.
Once I was up and running, Apache wasn’t running by default, so I dinked around with a cp /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S45httpd so that Apache would start on boot. Then I started Apache by executing /etc/rc.d/rc3.d/S45httpd start. Of course there are plenty of other ways to accomplish the same thing. It was close to midnight and I just wanted the thing open to the world at that point.
Then I pointed my Web browser at the server’s address, and my embryonic Weblog came up.
It won’t happen that way for you, because I already had Greymatter installed and configured before I did all that. In other words, I did things bass-ackwards. You should do it differently. Get Apache working right first. It’s less frustrating that way.
With Apache installed and running, point a Web browser at it. You should see some kind of Apache welcome screen–it’ll vary based on your Linux distro, but it’ll basically be some kind of show-off screen. You see it? Great. You don’t? Get Apache working. How? I dunno. Make sure it’s running, first of all. Type the command pidof httpd. You should get a couple of numbers. Maybe a lot of numbers. If all you get is a blank line, then Apache’s not running. If it’s running but not responding, you’ve probably got a problem with the configuration file. The default configuration file for Apache, unlike the default configuration of a lot of programs, does work reasonably well. The defaults will certainly do for a Weblog. Start with the default config, get it working, then get fancy later.
Working? Great. Open up port 80 on your DSL router and point it to your server’s address. Don’t expose any other ports. This improves security immensely. Now go to www.grc.com and run Shields Up!, then Probe My Ports. Port 80 should be open. If it’s not, either your Linux box is too secure (I wish I could offer some advice there but I don’t know much about un-securing a Linux box) or your router’s not forwarding the port right.
By default, in Mandrake at least, Apache puts its HTML files in /var/www. So, first, clear out /var/www/html. Next, I put all of the Greymatter files in /var/www/cgi-bin. Then I created directories named Archives in both /var/www/cgi-bin and in /var/www/html. The documentation is pretty good about what files need permissions of 755 and what needs 777 (yuck!) and what needs more restrictive settings, like 644 or 666.
As an aside, the archives directory being chmodded to 777 makes me nervous. That means that if I install Greymatter to a server that shares space with someone else, the entire world can see that directory. They can’t manipulate anything inside there as long as the files inside have more restrictive permissions, but I always cringe every time I see anything with 777 permissions. I knew people in college who’d just chmod everything to 777 because then it meant everything just worked all the time. Unfortunately, anyone who had telnet access to the machine could then go into that directory and change anything. I’m not as concerned about that, since I don’t share this PC with anyone. But 777 still doesn’t give me warm fuzzies. Unix ain’t Christianity. In Unix, 666 is ok (but 644 is much better), and 777 is a hacker’s delight, and therefore, pure evil.
After you chmod all your files, assuming your server is at 192.168.1.2, go to http://192.168.1.2/cgi-bin/gm.cgi. Greymatter should pop up. Go to the configuration screen and run down the line:
Local log: /var/www/html
Local entries: /var/www/html/archives
Local CGI: /var/www/cgi-bin
Website log path: /
Website entries path: /archives
Website CGI path: /cgi-bin
Set the other stuff the way you want it. Now hit Save Configuration. Now, immediately run Diagnostics and Repair. This will ensure that all files are where they need to be and permissions set correctly. If it can’t find something, do what you have to to satisfy it.
Now you’re ready to start editing templates and adding entries. You’ll need to exercise your HTML skills for that, or rip off someone’s templates. I didn’t look too hard, but I’m sure there are people out there offering Greymatter templates. If you have to, use an HTML generator to draw what you want, then take the code and put it in the template. I know HTML, so I coded mine by hand. That’s why they’re still sparse. The basic layout is there; I need to flesh it out. And I haven’t entered every template yet myself.
Now, for backups and stats… Backups are easy. I use the command tar -c /var/www >/home/dave/backup.tar. It only takes a second. You can compress the tar file and throw it on a floppy with the mcopy command. Or if Samba’s also configured and running, backup to a network-accessible directory and pull the file over to another machine.
For stats, I use LiveWebStats, but I don’t like it. Any Apache log analyzer will work.
There’s one other issue with Greymatter. It sends passwords plaintext, and thus, they’ll show up in your logs. So don’t make your stats public, at least not your referrers. If you’ll have remote editors, you need to consider that vulnerability–an editor’s password can potentially be intercepted.
Setting up Greymatter is a lot of work, but it’s a one-shot deal. You make your design, then it’s content-driven. Change your design, and it applies to the whole site. Nice. And when you publish, you only publish your new stuff.
But overall, I like Greymatter an awful lot.
Time to come clean
And now the torch
And shadows lead
Were it not so black and not so hard to see
How can it help you when you don’t know what you need
How can anybody set you free?
Would he walk upon the water
If he couldn’t walk away?
And would you
Would you carry the torch
For me?
And what if I gave you the key
To the doors of your design…
Lit the corridors of desire?
Where if not so black
And not so hard to see
What use to you then any fire?
–The Sisters of Mercy, “Torch” (Floodland, 1987)
I don’t bare my soul on my web page too often. Not that I’m unwilling to do that; I made a brief career of baring my soul in a newspaper column a few years ago. This weekend, as I visited weblog after weblog, looking for elements to steal and possibly improve upon, I realized that that’s mostly what people read weblogs for. At least the cool thing about Greymatter is I can make my postings in such a way as to serve whatever audience comes this direction. But I’ve become sidetracked. That happens a lot lately.
Very obviously, something’s bothering me, and I’m trying to figure out what. I see the symptoms. I sat down Friday night to write a manifesto. What I ended up with was a shotgun blast followed by a couple of quotable paragraphs. I get irritated easily. I flew off the handle last week about rankings on the Daynotes.com/org/net portals. I get irritated when editthispage.com crashes. I know what service delays do to readership. I know it far too well.
One of my very best friends is moving to Colorado in a couple of months. He’s talked to me, his boss has talked to me, and I kinda sorta understand where each is coming from but not really. Not that my opinion matters. I think the guy walks on water, but it looks like I’m the only one. Both of them want me to understand, and now he and the members of his Gen X ministry are looking to me to pick up his torch and lead. Given six months, I might be ready to do that. I don’t have six months. Meanwhile, I feel for him. He doesn’t feel like his contributions are valued. All of the communication he’s received indicates–to him at least–that it isn’t. I totally understand the desire to be valued. Maybe that’s a Gen X thing.
Another one of my very best friends is moving to Kansas City as soon as he finds a job there. Then he’s marrying my sister. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just really weird.
Another friend isn’t making plans to leave town–yet. She’s alienated. She’s just like my other friend I mentioned before–she feels like no one values her or the things she does, and I see her point. Will she leave? It probably comes down to how good the offers are and how mad she is the day they come in. I want to help her but I know there’s nothing I can do.
I probably shouldn’t be writing any of this because yesterday at the grocery store, I struggled to keep a proper grip on my grocery bags. It wasn’t that they were heavy–it was that my hand just wouldn’t do what my mind told it to do. The startled cashier asked if I needed help.
At work, my department’s getting cutback after cutback. I know I’ll be the last one cut. I’m not popular because I’m not a Microsoft lackey and I’m not a yes man. But I solve the problems no one else can solve, and I solve the normal problems much faster than anyone else in my group. I don’t want to be the last one cut, because the number of problems and the expectations of your clients don’t fall just because your staff numbers fell.
So I guess I know where my recent tendency to always assume the worst came from. None of this is insurmountable. Frankly most of it’s similar to things I’ve dealt with before.
At my worst, I fall into overdominant overanalysis, and I caught myself in there today. Then I realized I’ve been doing it all week. Then the question that song raises hit. “How can it help you when you don’t know what you need?” What’s “it?” Who cares? How can anything help you when you don’t know what you need?
Well, now that I see the problems, I know what I need. I can lapse into poor-me, or I can do what needs to be done and learn what I can from it.
Please be patient with me. This isn’t quite like setting up a two-computer TCP/IP network. Or like setting up Linux, Apache, and Greymatter and forwarding port 80 on my router to it, for that matter. Those things are a lot easier.
Two phone calls, one weird, one sad
My phone rang at about 1 p.m. this afternoon. I picked up. “Hello?”
“Hi!” Some unfamiliar female voice was overly happy to hear mine.
“Hi!” I said back, figuring I’d play along and try to buy some time to figure out who on earth this was.
“Dave?” she asked.
“Uhh, yee-ah,” I said, slowly.
“How are you!?” she asked forcefully, still way too happy.
I paused and analyzed the voice. Adult. Pre-middle age, probably in the 20s or 30s. Female. African-American. I ran through the list of people I know matching that description. No match. “Umm, I’m sorry, but I have no idea who this is,” I said.
“Yes you do!” her enthusiasm was unwaning.
“Umm,” I know, I know, I’m just a stupid male, but I honestly was drawing a blank.
“It’s your lover,” she said, tenderly and huskily enough to really freak me out.
Now, I haven’t had a date in eight months, so the likelihood of any female believing herself to be my lover is, well, really remote. Besides, I’m of the persuasion that the act that most people associate with the endearing term “lover” ought to wait until after marriage. So, very obviously, one of the people in this conversation was mistaken, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t me.
“It’s your lover,” she said again, pretty much the same way. I was starting to wonder if this wasn’t a practical joke someone was pulling off on me. I know more than a few pranksters, after all. I decided to play it safe.
“I… don’t have… one,” I said finally.
She laughed. “Sure you do, Dave!” And she said her name. I didn’t know anybody by that name.
“I’m pretty sure you’ve got the wrong number. This is Dave Farquhar.”
She let out a very embarrassed laugh. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said.
“That’s OK,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
She laughed some more. She was still laughing when I hung up the phone.
I laid the phone down on its cradle, and it wasn’t 30 seconds later that it was ringing again. I picked up again. “Hello?”
It was the same woman again. Her mood changed quickly. Very quickly. She verified the phone number she dialed. Then she turned desperate. “Are you visiting from out of town?” Nope, this is my phone number, and I live alone. “Did you just get this number?” Nope, I’ve had it for more than two years. I could hear the hurt. She didn’t have to tell me the story. I could pretty much put it together myself. Boy meets girl. Boy sleeps with girl, probably promising something more later. Boy gets what he wants. Boy makes up a phone number and gives it to girl so he won’t have to deal with commitment.
Scumbag.
04/29/2001
Please bookmark http://208.190.221.250 . There’s no guarantee the site will stay there, but Southwestern Bell’s DHCP servers tend to give systems that stay on 24/7 the same IP address over and over. It seems like editthispage has at least one outage a day now. Frankly, I’d rather trust Southwestern Bell’s DHCP servers, scary thought as that may be.
I’ll be making arrangements soon for an address with words in it. New content will be going up over there. I don’t want to give myself even more stuff over here to migrate. That would be kinda like buying new furniture the week before moving day.
For those of you who are curious, I forwarded port 80 on my router to a Pentium-120 running Mandrake Linux 7.2. I’m running the Apache Web server, and Greymatter on top of that. It’s fast. I’ve got a DSL connection, which isn’t the fastest upstream connection, but it’s reasonably quick. Greymatter’s demands aren’t all that high.
Anyway. Time to finish writing up some content, then run some errands.
Do you believe in miracles?
Do you believe in miracles?
Fair warning: strong religious content ahead. If you already know you don’t want to read something like that, click over to Discussions and read some of that. We’ve been talking about Weblogging software and who knows what else over there. I’ve got smart readers. Their contributions are worth a looksee.
I do still believe in miracles. I want to tell a story here about a minor miracle, but it has no impact without knowing the parties involved. And I’m not going to embarrass them by trying to tell it. I’ll get too many details wrong.
So instead, I’ll repeat something I said in Bible study last night. Yeah, last night. I get together with a bunch of other twentysomethings two Fridays a night for Bible study. Most people assume people my age have no interest in that sort of thing. Remember, the root word of “assume” is “ass.” Those who assume we never had any interest never asked. Yes, we’re the ones who typically wander into the 10:45 service on Sunday morning at 10:50 or 10:55. Frequently we burned out on church when we were younger, and we run so hard all week due to work and other growing responsibilities that Sunday is the only day we can sleep in a little. And it’s hard for us to get our acts together. Plus, the churches worth going to are frequently in neighborhoods we can’t afford to live in yet. So we have to drive a few miles to get there. But we’ll gladly give God an evening, even if that’s a Friday evening.
Hey, that’s another miracle, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s just plain weird. I don’t care.
Back to what I said. We were praying last night too. Yes, we’re the same people who grew up fidgeting a lot during prayer. Those of us who don’t pray much generally don’t for a couple of reasons. One, in most cases no one ever taught us how. And for another, we frequently haven’t seen enough results of prayer yet to have enough confidence. We’ll do things when we know it works. We’ve seen some results, so we pray. So as we were taking requests last night, I mentioned Kaycee. I’ve never met Kaycee and probably never will. I called her “a friend of a friend,” which I believe is accurate. I talked about the remarkable aspects of her story. I was totally wrong on her age–I said mid-twenties, because her writings display a maturity and a quality that’s rare even in a 29-year-old. She’s 19, which makes her all the more remarkable. She’s been dead twice. Only briefly, but yes, clinically dead, twice, from medical accidents. And she beat cancer, coming back from outlooks that for a while looked very grim indeed. Now she’s dying of liver failure.
At that point, I paused, and then I said something that I’ve halfway thought but never said and I’ve never heard anyone else say. God gave her three major miracles. Well, major in that she got to live longer than it looked. A miracle by definition can’t be explained by science, and I don’t know if her comebacks can be explained by science. I’m not close enough to the situation to be able to talk to the people who’d really know. But to me, three long shots happening to one person is a good indication of Someone Upstairs keeping an eye out for her.
So then I asked the big question. Why doesn’t it seem like anyone is praying for a miracle for her now? God did it three times. To bring her back from certain death again is nothing to God. It requires less effort from Him than picking up a piece of paper laying on the floor takes from us.
And the great guy who was leading the study last night along with his wife said, “Yeah. No one ever asks for miracles, even though we know they can happen.”
We asked God’s will, of course. Life, no matter how great, is nothing compared to heaven, so when God calls someone home, it’s cause for celebration for them. When a believer dies, the true victims are those who are left behind, not the believer who’s died. But sometimes God’s not finished yet. So we asked for a miracle.
When you love someone, you’ll do things for that person without them asking. Parents generally don’t wait until their kids ask for something to eat before they start fixing dinner. Loving parents give their kids healthy food for dinner instead of ice cream, because they know it’s better for them, even though vegetables sometimes don’t seem like something a loving parent would inflict on anyone.
But think about it. Don’t you like to be asked, sometimes? Don’t you like it when your son or daughter asks you to read a story? Or when your significant other asks a small favor? I’m not talking about nagging or manipulative asking. I’m talking about asking in a sincere, loving fashion. Isn’t that one of the coolest things you’ve ever felt?
I think it’s that way for God. God doesn’t like it when people try to manipulate Him, of course. But when someone asks for something sincerely and lovingly, I think He derives pleasure from that. He still doesn’t always say yes (just like you’re not going to hand your car keys over to your six-year-old, no matter how sincere and loving the question), but frequently He does.
Frequently enough that yes, I believe in miracles.
04/28/2001
Site update: Speaking of miracles, I got Apache and Greymatter working right on my ancient Pentium-120. I haven’t registered yet with any of the dynamic Web address providers, so right now I’m at the mercy of the DHCP server. At the moment, you can get to my experimental site at 208.190.221.250. I tried to make it look a lot like this site. I have successfully connected to it from the outside world (finally).
I’m still playing around with it a lot, but I like the results I’m getting so far.
Miracles. Fair warning: strong religious content ahead. If you already know you don’t want to read something like that, click over to Discussions and read some of that stuff. We’ve been talking about Weblogging software and who knows what else over there. I’ve got smart readers. Their contributions are worth a looksee.
I do still believe in miracles. I want to tell a story here about a minor miracle, but it has no impact without knowing the parties involved. And I’m not going to embarrass them by trying to tell it. I’ll get too many details wrong.
So instead, I’ll repeat something I said in Bible study last night. Yeah, last night. I get together with a bunch of other twentysomethings two Fridays a night for Bible study. Most people assume people my age have no interest in that sort of thing. Remember, the root word of “assume” is “ass.” Those who assume we never had any interest never asked. Yes, we’re the ones who typically wander into the 10:45 service on Sunday morning at 10:50 or 10:55. Frequently we burned out on church when we were younger, and we run so hard all week due to work and other growing responsibilities that Sunday is the only day we can sleep in a little. And it’s hard for us to get our acts together. Plus, the churches worth going to are frequently in neighborhoods we can’t afford to live in yet. So we have to drive a few miles to get there. All these factors combine to make it hard for us to make it on time. But we’ll gladly give God an evening, even if that’s a Friday evening.
Hey, that’s another miracle, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s just plain weird. I don’t care. I like weird. Remember, I listen to the Velvet Underground and The Pixies and The Cure and Joy Division.
Back to what I said. We were praying last night too. Yes, we’re the same people who grew up fidgeting a lot during prayer. Those of us who don’t pray much generally don’t for a couple of reasons. One, in most cases no one ever taught us how. And for another, we frequently haven’t seen enough results of prayer yet to have enough confidence. We’ll do things when we know it works. The subsection of Generation X that comprises our group has seen some results, so we pray. So as we were taking requests last night, I mentioned Kaycee. I’ve never met Kaycee and probably never will. I called her “a friend of a friend,” which I believe is accurate. I talked about the remarkable aspects of her story. I was totally wrong on her age–I said mid-twenties, because her writings display a maturity and a quality that’s rare even in a 29-year-old. She’s 19, which makes her all the more remarkable. She’s been dead twice. Only briefly, but yes, clinically dead, twice, from medical accidents. And she beat cancer, coming back from outlooks that for a while looked very grim indeed. Now she’s dying of liver failure.
At that point, I paused, and then I said something that I’ve halfway thought but never said and I’ve never heard anyone else say. God gave her three major miracles. Well, major in that she got to live longer than it looked. A miracle by definition can’t be explained by science, and I don’t know if her comebacks can be explained by science. I’m not close enough to the situation to be able to talk to the people who’d really know. But to me, three long shots happening to one person is a good indication of Someone Upstairs keeping an eye out for her.
So then I asked the big question. Why doesn’t it seem like anyone is praying for a miracle for her now? God did it three times. To bring her back from certain death again is nothing to God. It requires less effort from Him than picking up a piece of paper laying on the floor takes from us.
And the great guy who was leading the study last night along with his wife said, “Yeah. We don’t ask for miracles enough, even though we know they can happen.”
We asked God’s will, of course. Life, no matter how great, is nothing compared to heaven, so when God calls someone home, it’s cause for celebration for them. When a believer dies, the true victims are those who are left behind, not the believer who’s died. But sometimes God’s not finished yet.
When you love someone, you’ll do things for that person without them asking. Parents generally don’t wait until their kids ask for something to eat before they start fixing dinner. Loving parents give their kids healthy food for dinner instead of ice cream, because they know it’s better for them, even though vegetables sometimes don’t seem like something a loving parent would inflict on anyone.
But think about it. Don’t you like to be asked, sometimes? Don’t you like it when your son or daughter asks you to read a story? Or when your significant other asks a small favor? I’m not talking about nagging or manipulative asking. I’m talking about asking in a sincere, loving fashion. Isn’t that one of the coolest things you’ve ever felt?
I think it’s that way for God. God doesn’t like it when people try to manipulate Him, of course. But when someone asks for something sincerely and lovingly, I think He derives pleasure from that. He still doesn’t always say yes (just like you’re not going to hand your car keys over to your six-year-old, no matter how sincere and loving the request), but frequently He does.
Frequently enough that yes, I believe in miracles.