If I Had a Hammer . . .

All I was trying to do was get a document to print.  Just two or three measly pages—that was all I needed.  Do you think I could get the computer/printer to spit out those pages?  Not a chance!  I needed them right away so that I could get on to the next thing.  But, no!  No!  Absolutely not!

I did everything I knew how to do.  I used every workaround I could conceive.  I persisted and tried and retried and then tried again.  Finally, I called Tech Support, also known as my husband.  He was at work, and I didn’t want to bother him there, but the situation was becoming urgent.  So I dialed.  I explained the problem as lucidly and calmly as I could, using my own technical terms. Not everyone speaks my form of technical language, with its prolific use of terms such as “thingamabob,” “whatchamacallit,” and “thatthingthat Ican’trememberthetermfor.”  Usually, however, my Tech Support could sort it out and get to a solution.

This time, though, it didn’t work.  I explained; he instructed.  I attempted to follow the instructions; he reiterated.  “Move the cursor to hover over the stickythingy, and then click.”  Or something like that.  He’d ask for a report of what I did and what it did for the process; I’d become more frantic and shrill in my responses.  Finally, I had had it.  I felt totally incompetent, which is a feeling I try to avoid.  He gave one more instruction, and I responded not with humble obedience but with slamming down the phone.  Very mature.

I sat and stared at the screen, considering how satisfying it would be to find a hammer and smash the monitor to smithereens.  I sat and sat and considered and considered, all the while trying to calm myself.  Suddenly the door swung open.  Tech Support had come home to solve the problem, and solve it he did.  After I had my printing in hand, he admitted to me that he’d come home because he figured I was searching for a hammer to use on the monitor.  Tech Support knows me well.

Here’s the thing:  I usually understand the what—the outcome.  It’s the how that gets me.  I understand that usually if I follow the right steps, I get the outcome I need or want.  I move the cursor over the print icon and depress the button; the document prints.  But I don’t understand the how, especially if the process doesn’t go smoothly, if there’s some kind of snafu, if there’s some extra step I don’t know.  Then chaos breaks out.

I find the same to be true in my spiritual life.  I have an opinion about how things are supposed to go but oftentimes they don’t go my way.  A person balks just as my computer does.  I forget a significant piece of information just as I do while sitting at the keyboard.  A miscommunication gums up the clarity of the situation just as the wireless connection between computer and printer does.

How can I handle this?  I can  call Tech Support.  No, not my husband.  I can call on Jesus.  Jeremiah 29:13 gives us a reassuring promise, “¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

I find this Tech Support at the end of a prayer.

Questions for you:  Who’s your earthly Tech Support?  Who’s your spiritual Tech Support?  When do you call on Tech Support?