I run a Mac and a Palm PDA. (OK so I have lost some of the audience! It can’t be helped.) I have calendars and task lists on each and they easily get ‘out of sync’. It’s easy to resolve, you just connect the two machines and push a ‘sync’ button. Now my Palm PDA is called ‘ronbailey’. I know its not very original but my son set it up and that’s the name its stuck with. It had no more choice in the matter that I did. Tough, that Palm will just have to learn to live with it; I did!
So I connect the two machines, press my button and sit back to watch. The process proceeds smoothly (most times) and the software displays the phrase ‘synchronising ronbailey’. I find this phrase strangely provoking. I can’t help but think how necessary the process of ‘synchronising ronbailey’ really is. It is so easy to get ‘out of sync’. My Palm PDA picks up all kinds of oddities. Things like little errors in entering the data, usually not major issues but the software won’t compromise it is determined that ‘ronbailey’ will be synchronised.
Couldn’t ‘ronbailey’ stay ‘unsynchronised’? Well not if 'ronbailey' wants to stay in ‘communion’ with the Mac. (I know that Mac users can be a bit uppity about their machines but although I like Macs I hesitate to describe mine as ‘divine’, except for this parable.) Does it really matter that the Mac calendar has 12:10 for the appointment and the Palm has 10:10? The software will not compromise; it is determined that there should be absolute accord between the Mac and the Palm. It reminds me of the imagined conversation I once heard of a man who felt he heard God say “the trouble with you and me is that we are not compatible… and I don’t change”.
When the software hits one of these discrepancies it puts up a label which allows me to ‘resolve the conflict’. I just have to choose which is right, the Mac or the Palm. If I decide that the Mac has the correct information I can just accept it and the Mac will correct the Palm. There is a little box I can tick which says if I always want to resolve this kind of conflict in this way the software will do it. In my parable, of course, the Palm is never right when in gets out of sync with the Mac. In fact there is real fellowship between my Mac and my Palm; the Mac will listen to the Palm and the Palm will listen to the Mac. They are ‘fellow-workers’ in the great exercise of ‘synchronising ronbailey’. The Mac will not impose its point of view unless 'ronbailey' permits it.
I can actually choose to have the Mac to overwrite everything on the Palm and you might think that is the obvious choice to make, but God doesn’t offer this option; he insists that I make a decision on each ‘conflict’. To overwrite the Palm is not what God means by fellowship.
The ‘conflicts’ aren’t always contentious, they are sometimes just a difference of viewpoint. They are not major confrontations but its just that this software will not compromise and it will not stay quiet. I can choose to live without ‘synchronising ronbailey’ but each time I connect the two machines it will gently remind me that we have some unfinished business.
What ‘ronbailey’ needs is a regular connection and the time to listen. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to know how we got ‘out of sync’ but the software knows it has happened and is available with the offer of a resolution and harmony.
[color=0000ff]“This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1John 1:5-7 NKJV)
“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…” (Rom 8:29 NKJV)
“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2Cor 3:18 NKJV)
“…seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him:” (Col 3:9-10 ASV) [/color]From now on I know how I am going to spend the time while the machines are ‘synchronising ronbailey’. I have some synchronising of the other Ron Bailey to attend to.