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Written by Mark Madavan
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It was a noise that occurred in the wrong place. It sounded like a crisp packet being scrunched, but I was the only person in the room and was definitely lacking that particular light snackage.
Instinctively my hand began to search behind cushions and in sofa corners to try and locate the offending item – I knew in due course this may in fact become evidence in any investigation of whether little Madavans had engaged in unauthorised crisp consumption in our food restricted front room. The packet stubbornly refused to surrender itself - then I heard the sound again. A small wave of panic lapped against my mind, the noise was coming from my computer.
With increasing realisation I concluded that this was not a case of little people inside my computer noshing on an unhealthy snack, but the death-throes of my hard-drive. Function after function froze, more crisps were consumed, my computer tried to restart itself. I waited. Panic grew. There was no warm Windows welcoming message forming on the screen –then it appeared, unemotional, uncaring “No Hard disc found”. Those who have some computer knowledge will know what this means - thank you for your immediate sympathy. Those who have no idea about how computers work: imagine that you stored every letter, note, picture, essay, sermon, plan, CD, DVD in a filing cabinet in your house, then one day without notice the filing cabinet is gone, completely destroyed. “Oh dear”, “Bother”, “What a nuisance” and other similar comments would probably flood your mind and the immediate area around you.
Computer minded people will now be asking “did you back it up?” (Basically make a copy of everything on your computer so that if such a thing did happen you could recover it.) The answer was “sort of”. Three months ago absolutely everything was backed-up, but over the past few months only parts. I felt sick.
I began trawling my mind to identify specifically what I had saved on my computer, what I had lost. The scripts for a half dozen sermons, study notes, a ton of paperwork for the building project; reports, financial projections, presentations, all of my email correspondence, holiday flight confirmation – e-tickets, a couple of CDs I downloaded rather than purchasing a physical CD – the sick feeling did not depart.
The recovery mission began as soon as the hard drive was replaced. I began to hunt down the data I knew I had shared with other people, asked companies to re-issue emails and bit by bit, incredibly, I found myself retrieving loads of what I had lost. Sadly not everything was recovered, but an amazing amount was found – much much more than I had ever expected.
Why am I telling you this tale? (Besides prompting you all to stop putting off backing-up your computers!)
I’ve been reflecting on this experience and two things struck me. The first thing has to do with community. We live in a culture where independence is king – personal choice and opinions are things to defend, we cherish our right to choose, decide things for ourselves. However if I suddenly lost my memory, for me to have any hope of recovering all that I had lost, I would require the help of many, many people; family, friends, work, church, school, small groups, to name just a few. I couldn’t do it by myself, I couldn’t do it with just me and God, I couldn’t do it with just me plus one or two other people – I would need a whole host of help.
If this is true, then surely I also need all of these people “now” to fully be who God created me to be. Fullness in God, and life, is not found in the isolated place called “me”, but in relationships and community we are in. This is by no means belittling a personal relationship with God, but more magnifying God’s design for us to find fullness in community – which is why God created and made us to be church. Beyond activities into true relationships. The second thing I pondered had to do with the information that I could not recover, the details and
documents I had not shared with others. The Bible tells us that God knows us completely, the things shared and the things kept close. God knows. God also never loses things, crashes or forgets. At times this truth brings concern – God knows my deepest secrets, but this also brings great comfort for God knows my deepest secrets but He still loves me. This isn’t an excuse to do whatever I want “because God loves me”, but a powerful truth that even when we feel everything is lost, God knows, God loves.
Colossians 1:10 “Live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God.”
Share more, trust more, live more.
Mark Madavan
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