One day this past week there was a prediction of evening sprinkles. Since we have been having a drought for a few months, a prediction of sprinkles was welcome, but it always leaves us wanting more! A few sprinkles are not enough to do us much good; it is just a promise that it can actually still rain. Suddenly we began to hear an odd sound. It was kind of a strange sound—could it possibly be thunder? But no thunder was supposed to happen for us here! Yet, it was very much thunder—a sound that we aren't used to hearing in recent months! With a new to us car in our possession, we have been trying to keep it in the garage, with and without storms!
A quick check of radar on our favorite weather TV station confirmed that indeed we had heard thunder. A few showers and lightning were in our area. Knowing that thunder can mean hail sometimes, the decision was to put the cars away before the rain arrived.
Then came a boom, and a sizzle! My husband felt a slight compression of air change! That boom seemed to be pretty close! But we have experienced closer strikes in past storms, so we didn't think too much about it. We had checked radar on the TV so decided to go off to bed since there didn't seem to be much to be concerned about!
Normally we can get about 6 channels on our small TV, the one we use most frequently. We have a small window antenna that allows us to receive these channels. I use this small TV early in the morning each day as I do some muscle mass building exercises. It helps with the daily exercise routine that can get a bit boring! I try to be diligent with these exercises in hopes that I can qualify for hip surgery. But before we went to bed, we discovered that we could receive just one channel out of the six and it was not one that we normally like the best!!! Needless to say, I wasn't exactly pleased but at that hour of the night, there was nothing we could do to change the situation. If I was going to exercise with the channel I like best, I would have to go to a different room! And the ease of doing the exercises would not be as good, in fact some of the exercises would not work for me with my limitations in the new location. I definitely missed my normal routine. Nope, I do not like change!
The next morning, I turned on the TV and I was ready to begin my exercises. Nothing had changed. Still only 1 channel and not the one I wanted! I like my small TV to catch up with world events early each morning as I exercise. It is close to my exercise location; I can keep the sound very low so as to not disturb anyone else at that early hour while I exercise. No matter how much we tried, and adjusted and changed the location of the small window antenna, we were not going to receive reception. Apparently, the storm that brought the boom to us did something to the TV or the antenna. A quick check of another larger TV let us know that it was okay and very usable, and we could receive all the channels. So, just the TV I wanted to use was not working.
Next, we did what most people of this current generation do—we googled it!! And received no advice! Except that we could try to do a factory reset! And that we couldn't do! If you have followed these "Thoughts", you may remember that we have a grandson that did something by pushing a series of numbers with our remote that changed our TV picture size in a way that we didn't appreciate! We have had a picture that is so large we couldn't see a good percentage of it. To fix what he did, we would have had to do another factory reset. And since we did not have the original remote, we were out of luck on fixing that problem. And now, we could once again not do a factory reset! It seemed that when we went to bed, all was fine. Then all had changed overnight. We even tried rescanning the channels available—twice!
The next step in trying to solve our problem was to exchange this non-working TV for another one. Now, you should realize that this is not an easy task. Today's appliances all take cords to plug into electricity receptacles. To change TVs, we had to carefully move them from their places and that isn't easy for us who can't carry anything in our arms anymore. Then came changing three cords plus 2 speaker cords, 5 cords in all. To connect to the antenna, etc., that involved 2 more cords. Oh my! I always let someone else sort all those cords out! But the uncontrolled cord mess does make me very unhappy. After disconnecting, moving the TVs, and then reconnecting—we discovered that the problem did not lie in the TV. The storm had somehow killed our small window antenna! It is inside our home, so it is a bit mysterious as to how and why. Still, not working means replacing it! Getting a new one means the problem is not necessarily solved immediately. Then everything must be reconnected all over again! We managed to keep our tempers cool though! What a tangled mess of cord chaos we had to make order out of. Persistence was definitely needed. Then the different TV with the new antenna in place had to be scanned again! and again! Finally, we were satisfied that all was the way we wanted. And the added benefit was that the messed-up picture size went away with the exchange of the 2 different TVs!
You just don't know when God has some lessons to teach you! And sometimes the lessons come after a storm in your life. And the lessons can come unexpectedly.
While we had numerous problems to solve in our efforts to connect the various appliances and get things to work and we experienced many difficult problems trying to make a good connection, it made us realize how easy it is to connect with God! We don’t need multiple cords and ways. We just need to open our hearts and speak with Him. It couldn't be easier! We speak, He listens, then we listen, and hear Him talking to us/ME! There are no cords to connect. We don't have to worry about what will go wrong. We can place the results of a storm in His hands and let Him solve the problem for us.
Satan tries to mess with our signals. He gives us a boom and a sizzle of destruction. He will mess with things as quick as lightning. Satan can destroy the signals God is trying to send to us. Then we don't receive God's signal and we mess up! He destroys our ability to receive the message—the signal sent from God on how to perform. We receive what we don't want. The full message from God leads us to success. Lack of not receiving a message because Satan interfered, lead us to failure!
Reset is also easy. We don’t have to reconnect by a factory reset. God lets us reset daily! We can also receive reception from God—anywhere. We don’t need a precisely placed antenna. No antenna is needed at all. And no storm in life can ever disturb God! He controls the storms and lets them pass by. Storms are from Satan—God gives recovery from our storms.
