Decent Milling Machine in Miami?

I had assumed that my only machine tool buy for the first half of this year would be a lathe. Now I think I may have been wrong. Sometimes you see a deal that is so good you have no choice but to take it.

Last night I noticed a Bridgeport mill for sale locally. Nine hundred bucks. It doesn’t look great; it’s painted in one of the shades known to Internet forum users as “Ebay blue.” But it has a DRO, what may be a Kurt vise, a power feed, and a bunch of collets.

A used DRO is worth maybe 500 bucks. The vise is worth 250. The collets would run maybe a hundred. I could take the good stuff off of this, sell the rest for scrap, and break even. Or I could use it until something better showed up, take the good stuff off, put the good stuff on the better machine, and then sell this one for scrap.

Whoops! The same machine is on Ebay for $4500! What’s up with that? The bigger Ebay photos don’t look so hot. And it’s not local! It’s in Tampa!

Never mind. When you add $700 to get it here, it’s not so exciting.

Church was good today. They’ve been putting on an Easter show. It’s impressive. The acting is not Oscar-quality, and it would not be the end of the world if someone polished up the script, but most of the music was incredible. I don’t know where they find these people.

The best part came at the end. People who were at the scene of the crucifixion took the mike, and they gave their testimonies. One credited God with finding her a job. Another said God restored his business and his family after his wife died from cancer. And another said her daughter was healed of terminal cancer and has since gone on to have a recording career in Christian music.

I suspect that we focus too much on what God does for us, and not enough on what we’re supposed to do for him. But it’s extremely important for people to talk about the miracles in their lives. People who don’t believe point to “miracles” that have turned out to be false, and they make the bizarre claim that no one has ever been proven to have experienced a miracle. But answered prayers are all around us. People really do get healed of cancer from time to time. Folks have visions. Families are put back together. And you can find the witnesses. They’re real people, with names. Lots and lots of people pray for things they don’t receive, but they’re not the whole story.

I had a strange experience on Friday. Twice in my life I have literally felt the presence of God in the room with me, so powerfully that I could tell you its exact location. On other occasions, I’ve felt it in a more diffuse and general way, but that almost always happens in church, not when I’m alone. On Friday, I was sitting here in this chair, and I felt it descend on me. For no clear reason. Not in one location, but throughout the atmosphere of the room. If you know the sensation I’m talking about, you know it’s very, very pleasant. It’s something that doesn’t happen every day or on command, so when it happens, you stop what you’re doing and try to enjoy it and make it last. I sat here and concentrated on it and made the most of it.

I can’t figure out why it happened or what the point of it was. I wish it would happen more often.

Sometimes I’m suspicious of people who claim to have supernatural experiences and who say they know exactly what they meant or why they happened. In my experience, God is not obvious. He does things that seem to have no purpose, and he does them when you least expect them, and you are left grateful but also somewhat confused.

The thing that impressed me about it was that it appeared to have no connection whatsoever to anything I had done. I wasn’t fasting or writing a big check to help orphans or doing anything else that could be considered particularly righteous. In fact, I was feeling guilty about some bad things I had done. I always think slipping up will wreck my relationship with God and set me back, but it doesn’t always work that way. Maybe it never works that way and I just don’t realize it. In any case, I felt like I had received something of tremendous value. I’ll bet this doesn’t happen very often to people we all think of as lucky, like Bill Gates or Barack Obama. I think it’s better than the things they’ve received, and that I’m luckier than people like that. When those people die, the good things they’ve received disappear. Things that advance you spiritually can’t be taken away. I think this is why the Bible uses words like “vanity” and “leasing” to describe earthly blessings. They’re not permanent, and you don’t own them. I own the good things that have been given to me. Forever.

Here’s something I’ve thought about a lot. If civilization somehow disappeared, and a group of people survived on an island somewhere, and some of those people had been rich and powerful beforehand, those people would no longer be anything special. They’d have no advantage over anyone else. Donald Trump would be no better off than a guy who collected garbage for a living. They’d be equals. But people who knew God would still know him, and they would still have all the advantages they had before the disaster.

I think about that, and it makes me wonder what’s real and what isn’t.

I guess I’m rambling. Marv is squawking for attention, so I’ll stop here.