Even Slow Old Computers Are A Blessing

Meaningful Mondays is something that I am starting and hope to use as a tool of encouragement for all of us to look at the important things in life—the moments that take our breath away. Many Mondays I feel like we tend to see the difficult moments of the upcoming week and fail to recognize the beauty before our eyes. Each Monday is a new day. A fresh start. No mistakes. I hope that through these weekly Meaningful Monday posts you all will be encouraged and able to start your week positively.

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A few nights ago I was up late rushing to finish up scholarship applications due the next morning. It had been a long, exhausting day and 11pm was rolling around. All I had left to do was fax two things and print off a whole bunch of pages. All the hard work was done… so I thought.

I started to bring up the files on the only computer I could print from. A minute later the page was still loading. I tried deleting it and starting over but came up with the same results. Now, we have all had this problem before. Whenever we are in a time crunch our printers or laptops seem to suddenly stop working. In this case our computer. It is ancient, I think it still has the Windows XP version on it and often it chooses to just stall without rhyme or reason.

At this point I was frustrated. I had worked hard all day and was so close to being done but I could not get it to bring up the documents I needed. Yes, after a few moments I burst out into tears. Then through the tears I prayed. I just asked God to let the computer work so that I could be done and go to bed. I knew He could make it work but for some reason was choosing not to.

Soon I recognized that my brother’s laptop was also sitting on the desk so I tried to fax, load the documents on his computer and print from it. It all worked. I was astonished. I did not know that was possible. I thought that our printer was too old to connect to my brother’s new laptop. Then I realized that if it worked on his laptop it has got to work on mine. So, I tried my laptop.

AND IT WORKED!

I was so thankful and relieved. Later I realized that this was a God moment. He had my best interest in mind and did not want me to continue to use the old laptop to print from because it was such an inconvenience. He said no to my original request (to allow the old laptop to load) because He had something better in mind—a blessing.

Now this was not a life or death situation (although at the time I would have argued for it). It was a pretty insignificant technical difficulty. I could have waited for an hour or so and eventually the old computer would have worked. However, God had something greater in mind.

Philippians 4:6-7, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

God used this "problem" or "trial" to bring me close to Himself. He gave me a blessing. He taught me have a different perspective through this situation. He taught me to pray about the small things in life. He wants to communicate with me and you always. Even about the seemingly insignificant things, because nothing in life happens by accident.

Wherever you are, whoever you are with, no matter what is happening , God is there. He is giving you opportunities to show Himself to you and for you to be an example to others. God's timing is ALWAYS perfect. His plan is ALWAYS perfect. We just need to have a little faith, a lot of prayer with some patience and peace to trust that He's got everything under control.

I hope this Monday you will be able to have a little perspective change and see that God can use something as weird as an old, slow computer to bring you closer to Himself.

Blessings,

~Grace