{"id":3506,"date":"2009-05-12T20:14:43","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T01:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/?p=3506"},"modified":"2009-05-12T20:31:46","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T01:31:46","slug":"more-weird-tales-from-the-religious-kook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/?p=3506","title":{"rendered":"More Weird Tales From the Religious Kook"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ignore Him and He’ll Go Away<\/em><\/p>\n

Apparent coincidence is one of the hallmarks of effective Christian living. The deeper you get into your faith, and the more trust you put in God, the more weird things happen.<\/p>\n

Here are a couple new ones, from my life.<\/p>\n

Last week, I got an email from a guy who sells machine tools. I ignored it, because I figured I was being spammed. Also, he had a Millrite listed for over two thousand dollars, which suggested his prices were not too good. I didn’t realize a regular reader of this blog knew this guy, and he had told him about me.<\/p>\n

Later on, I got on Ebay, looking for a 4-jaw lathe chuck. I needed an L00 mount, and I needed an 8″ chuck. This is the usual size for a 12″ lathe, which is what I have. A seller had an unused (new old stock) Skinner chuck from a 13″ South Bend, and he also had a back plate. We negotiated, and I bought the parts. I got a good deal, and I didn’t have to buy Asian or used. Guess who the seller is? The guy who emailed me. Out of the hundreds or thousands of people on Ebay selling machine tool parts and tooling, I found him.<\/p>\n

What does it mean? I don’t know. It must mean something. It’s not a small coincidence. Many, many people sell lathe chucks on Ebay.<\/p>\n

Second story. Last week, I received two self-defense DVDs from Gunvideo.com. Looks like good stuff. But I didn’t order it! Some guy named Ray did. His name was on the invoice. I figured someone who meant well had taken the kind but somewhat creepy step of finding out my real name and where I lived, and that he had sent me the DVDs as a present. Either that, or it was a gay stalker.<\/p>\n

I decided to email the people at Gunvideo. They said there was a screwup. I had ordered something from them a year ago, and this Ray person owned the company that produced it. They had it drop-shipped to me from his company. Then recently he ordered something from them, and somehow my address ended up in the ship-to box. They said they’re still trying to figure it out. But they told me to keep the DVDs.<\/p>\n

I keep feeling like I’m supposed to have guns and tools. I can’t figure it out. I wonder what’s on those DVDs.<\/p>\n

When you’re a Christian and you live by faith, your life becomes like the Bible. Almost everything in it has meaning. It makes it harder to be disappointed or rattled or angry. When something goes wrong, instead of getting mad, you think, “There must be a reason for this. I wonder what it is.” And you look forward to finding out, which usually happens.<\/p>\n

This is often extremely irritating to non-Christians, even though there is nothing aggressive or inherently provocative about it. It should elicit no negative response whatsoever. Why should it anger you that another person takes misfortune well? Marcus Aurelius found the complacency of Christian martyrs annoying, and he increased their suffering because of it. Why is it so aggravating to non-believers? I would say, but that would aggravate them even more. Most Christians know; I don’t have to tell them.<\/p>\n

Christianity is funny. It looks better from inside than outside. Even backslidden Christians who should remember how rewarding it is tend to forget, and they dread returning. I was there; I know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ignore Him and He’ll Go Away Apparent coincidence is one of the hallmarks of effective Christian living. The deeper you get into your faith, and the more trust you put in God, the more weird things happen. Here are a couple new ones, from my life. Last week, I got an email from a guy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-guns-hunting-fishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toolsofrenewal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}