Saturday Night, Redeemed

I’m not going to church today. I went last night. It’s much more convenient, and the services are smaller. The traffic is worse, probably because everyone in Miami rushes to South Beach to get drunk and stoned on the weekends. But it’s tolerable.

Back when I started keeping the sabbath, I truly looked forward to and enjoyed the day. When I started attending church regularly, that began to change. Not something I expected. The church has three services on Sunday, at 8:30, 10:30, and 12:30. My preference is to go at 8:30, but my sister insisted on 12:30, and we usually found ourselves leaving for that service between 12:45 and 1:00, which put us there at 1:00 or later. Then we usually ended up doing something after church, and I would often arrive home after 3 p.m. I always prepared to leave by 12:15, so if you add it all up, I was cutting at least four hours out of the middle of the day in order to go to church.

I found it hard to accomplish anything before going, and afterward, I was tired. So the sabbath was not what it had been.

On top of that, my early morning prayer sessions shrunk considerably. It wasn’t by choice. For one reason or another, I had trouble sleeping, and I’m worried about the effects of sleep deprivation, so I would add an hour or two to the alarm. And I was spending way too much time fooling with tools, so I was getting to bed an hour and a half later. Instead of getting up at 5:30, I’ve been getting up between 7:30 and 9:00.

I’m sorry to say that my sister and I have had considerable discord over family business, so she and I have not been to church together for two or three weeks. That’s bad. But when you’re a Christian, good always comes from bad. The good is that I can now get to church on time, and I can go to a service that doesn’t cut the sabbath in half.

“On time” is not completely right. I try to miss the first ten minutes, because that’s when the church concentrates its youth-oriented boombox worship music. I think it’s great that they’re reaching out with that stuff, but it makes my head hurt, and I would like to be able to hear when I’m 60.

I’m going to take Sunday back, starting today. You can’t expect a tree to grow if you don’t take care of the roots, and I have not been doing that. I want to continue to see our lives improve, and that will only happen if I get my routine back and start each day with God. It’s surprising how far off the path you can get in a few days or a week. Fortunately, I miss the sensation of being on track, so I am highly motivated to correct my course.

I haven’t written much lately about this part of my life–less than I wanted–because some mysterious person tried to come between me and my sister by sending her passages from my blog. Things that were intended to upset her. You have to wonder what motivates a person to do things like that. It didn’t benefit them at all, and it was intended to hurt two people who were trying to rebuild a family that was in ruins. And it caused me to deprive readers of material they found encouraging and uplifting. There was nothing positive about this person’s intentions. Whoever did it knew that harm would come of it, and they did it anyway, because that was the point. It was pure malice.

One of the bad things about blogging is that you develop enemies whose existence is completely concealed from you, and they never have the courage or integrity to identify themselves, explain why they tried to harm you, or offer you a chance to work things out with them. The Internet is a playground for the malicious people who are too weak to face their victims, and the rest of us pretty much have to depend on God to defend us. The alternative is to stoop to the level of those who abuse us. Who wants that? Who wants to be the kind of person who hides while distributing viruses, hacking into servers, committing identity theft, spreading inflammatory gossip, or trying to motivate people to harm others? A tick dangling from a dog has more dignity and justification. And a greater hope of success. What God puts in motion, you can’t successfully oppose. You can, however, bring condemnation and shame and misfortune on yourself.

This family has had so much unnecessary pain, and here we are, accepting God’s help and working our way into the light, and someone wants to put a stop to our recovery. Someone out there would draw pleasure from that. What kind of life can that person have? I can understand trying to fill an empty life by doing good for other people. But evil? Especially an ugly and cowardly type of evil? How can that make you happy? Obviously it can’t. Whoever did this has planted seeds of misery and self-loathing in their own field, and their abundant harvest is on the way. They need to repudiate what they did and learn to bless other people instead of attacking them without reason.

The one sure way to make good come of this is to forgive and pray for this person, so that’s what I’ll do. God didn’t bring us this far to be stopped by malevolent gossip.

I don’t care who it was. I don’t want an apology. Whoever you are, I hope you will take a moment and realize that when you make innocent people suffer just so you can draw pleasure from their pain, you do yourself more harm than you can ever hope to do them. As an enemy, you are weak, but the enemy you are making is not, and no one can protect you from him. You have already failed. You never had a chance. You might as well try to salvage something from the experience and protect yourself.

In the end, my sister and I will find blessings in this. You will not. Unless you change while there is time. If you want to make amends, don’t contact me. I don’t need to know your name. Find someone who needs a blessing and give it to them. Give something to the poor or the hungry or the sick. Pray for someone who needs help. Try to find pleasure in doing good, so you will stop bringing misery on yourself.