Two "Almost" Lessons

By going to afterburners, working intensely, and putting in overtime, I pushed through and reformatted all 22 of my books so they now are available in three formats: print copies, downloadable to desktop computers, and e-books which can be read on e-book reading machines.

I’m proud of myself.

This represents an enormous accomplishment for me since normally my only computer skills are limited to cutting, pasting, and finding porno sites.

Thus, my on-line book catalog stands ready for the onslaught of book buyers which the newspaper tells me will surge onto the internet on the day after Thanksgiving. If my surge goes like last year’s, that means about three people will actually buy one of my books between now and New Years.

Hey, a surge of three people is better than no surge at all.

Personally I have never read an e-book. I like a physical ink and paper volume. But there is a new age of readers out there in the world. I’ve even met one lady who can read books on her smart phone! My son’s e-book reader holds the text of hundreds of books in a little device hardly bigger than one of my paperback books. He loves the gadget.

While preparing the additional new formats for my writings I… er, learned is too strong a word… observed is also too strong a word…. maybe noticed …. Or even thought about…two lessons.

Maybe God is trying to teach me something and I’m just beginning to get a hint.

First thing I noticed is that I learn how to do something after I’ve already done it and am not likely to ever need to do it again.

I learn how—after the fact.

For instance, AFTER I reformatted and resized 19 book covers for this e-book project, working one file at a time—I learned how to do that operation to dozens of book covers as a batch in one single computer operation!

If I had know how to do that beforehand, I could have saved hours and hours of time.

And here’s another thing, after I had individually worked with 17 files of my 22 book files uploading them one at a time… I discovered that in computer jargon the words unpublish project and delete project do NOT mean the same thing.

You don’t want to know how I found that out!.

You really don’t.

Had I known the difference beforehand, I could have saved a full day’s work on this endeavor. But I didn’t find that out till only five books remained to be processed.

I doubt that I will ever again in my life need to do this kind of clerical/editorial work again… so I wonder why it is that I learn how, after I no longer need to know how?

Is there some spiritual insight to be gained here?

I don’t know.

Another thing that strikes me… the other day I expected a visitor, a friend of my son’s and his wife’s. I wanted to make a good impression, so I made all sorts of preparations. I emptied the ashtrays. Swept the front walk. I shaved. I bought special cookies to serve. I unstopped the bathroom sink—which in the divine order of the universe always clogs up when company’s coming unless there’s a whole bunch of company coming then it’s the toilet that clogs just hours before they are due to arrive.

In other words, I prepared.

The visitor postponed our meeting.

I realized that, not just this week, but all my life, I have spent inordinate amounts of time preparing for things which never happened.

Now here is my puzzlement—I’m writing a book about how God leads us—and I can’t help but wonder that if I am led by the Spirit of God, then why do I get ready for stuff that doesn’t happen? Couldn’t the Spirit have told me, “Hey, back off, John. Don’t get your bowels in an uproar. Just do your normal jobs and quit obsessing about making a good impression”.

Did the Spirit tell me that?

If He did, then I didn’t hear Him.

Oh.

Have I stumbled onto something here?

Perhaps God would have taught me how to batch-manage files if I’d read the instructions beforehand. Maybe God’s Spirit did tell me to relax and not go to afterburners and not obsess about that postponed meeting, but I was not listening.

Maybe this whole work week has not been about preparing manuscripts but preparing me.

The kingdom of Christ on earth may just possibly muddle through without my real books or my e-books… maybe what needs reformatting here is me.

On another note:

Our family decided to each one spend Thanksgiving in their own homes this year instead of gathering for a massive feast in one place.

Ginny and I are looking forward to that; we never get enough time alone.

Weeks ago, Donald and Helen had invited us to Thanksgiving dinner at their home.

Then last week Donald called to un-invite us.

He said, “Dad, we’ve met this really nice couple at church and they asked us out to Fleming Island for dinner with them. They are really nice and we want to go there instead of having you and Mom here”.

So I said, “Well, if you’d rather spend Thanksgiving with nice people instead of with us, go ahead”.

Lord, but we laughed over that!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Hope to see you after the weekend surge.

John