By Waylon Bailey
I bought my first personal computer in the early 80s. During that time I was professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
That early personal computer was a perfect fit for my work at the seminary. I was writing books, articles, and preparing notes for lectures. And while I wasn’t at the beginning of the personal computer revolution, I certainly was on the front end.
It wasn’t long before I decided that I was ready for an upgrade. A number of my friends had a hard disc instead of the two floppy discs that I was using. As I talked with them I came to the conclusion that I really did need a hard drive and that I needed either a 20 meg, 30 meg, or 40 meg hard drive. The problem was I couldn’t decide which one. Finally, I decided to call IBM to get some advice.
My call to the IBM Office was one of the most memorable conversations of my life. Not only did I learn a lot about computers, but I also received advice about what size hard drive to purchase.
I’ll never forget what the sales person told me. He said that I in fact did need a hard drive. That wasn’t hard to digest. The second thing he told me made sense at the time, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Here’s what he said, “You will never use all the memory in your 20 meg hard drive.” Today, of course, every app in your phone is larger than 20 megabytes.
I have also not forgotten the third thing he said, “You have everything you need.”
The world is always telling us you have everything you need. The world tells us that the things that really matter are the things that you can see and feel in this world. Maybe the world has been telling you, “You have every thing you need” when you are sad, hurting, and alone.
What the world says and what God says are diametrically opposed. The Bible tells us that we can never be complete until we know God.
Blaise Pascal famously said that we are “born into a duplicitous world that shapes us into duplicitous subjects and so we find it easy to reject God continually and deceive ourselves about our own sinfulness.” Each of us has a God sized vacuum in our lives. We can never be fully alive until we are alive in Him.
It’s easy to follow the ways of the world, but hard to follow the ways of God. Jesus told us that the way is broad and easy that leads to destruction but narrow is the way that leads to eternal life (Matthew 7:13-14).
Which way are you heading today?
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