And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work..
- 2 Corinthians 9:8
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
- Psalm 23:1
Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.
- 2 Corinthians 3:5
A month ago, when I wrote this, I was having a very memorable weekend. It is one of those weekends that may not be remembered in Heaven, since it was one trouble after another.
But I am laughing and rejoicing.
On Friday the 13th, our area lost power due to extremely high winds. When that happened about the same time last year, I was out of power for four days. This time, they said that it would be two hours. Seven hours later, the power came back on.
Then five minutes later, since I had called in the outage, I got a call from the power company, “Is your power back on? It is? Good! Goodbye.” Nice of them to call at 2:30am, wake you up, just to find out what they already knew.
I am not being superstitious. I am just saying that it was a fact that the power went out on Friday the 13th. The power was not restored until Pi Day. For those in the USA, the month comes before the day of the month. Thus, March 14th is 3/14, or 3.14 (pi).
Then, at church during Sunday school we talked about people who were still out of power. We prayed about that. I had a dinner meeting to attend at the church, so I got home a little late. While cooking supper, luckily only warming up some soup, the power went out again. I have a gas stove, and the burner was already lit. I finished heating the soup and shut off the gas to the burner. The outage was only three hours, but when I reported it, they gave me an estimate of over 24 hours to get the power back on.
I prayed and God gave me calm with regard to staying in place. Without a CPAP, I would get little sleep, but the power came back on before I went to bed.
So, the first power outage was on Friday the 13th. The second was something I should have been on alert to beware of. Aren’t you always supposed to “Beware the Ides of March!”
Sorry, I had to quote a little Shakespeare, as in Julius Caesar.
So, I lost writing time on Friday. I lost writing time on Sunday. Power was restored and I got up at a decent time Monday and started writing, but when I went to save my document, I was offline.
I went to my cable company’s website, using my phone, and we have somewhere between 500 and 2000 customers without cable and internet service in our area.
For the first time in four days, I have uninterrupted writing capability, and no ability to upload it to the internet.
And the cable company is cagey. They say, “We are getting your service restored as fast as possible”, but there is no estimate at all.
So, I cannot do any internet searches to prepare posts for posting. I like copy/paste for Scriptures. So, was I dead in the water?
No, I could scan things and then use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to use for quotations out of books. And I could write. I could even write short stories with very little need for research.
But I prayed first.
Lord, are you hinting that I need to take a break, but I have had a lot of rest in the last three days? Or are you testing me to see how creative that I can be? Amen.
I had calm over the latter option. I did some scanning and finished writing a Bible Study.
Then, I put a warm compress on my eyes. I laughed in that I used the music channel on television to time the seven minutes that the mask must cover my eyes, about two songs. The therapy is working, so I try to do it every day. But with no cable or internet, I went to bed and resolved to take the mask off while thinking through the wording of a short story that I had been writing. When the mask was no longer warm (7-10 minutes later), I could get back to work. An hour later, the mask was cold when I woke up. I guess God wanted me to work and rest.
So, power lost on Friday the 13th, power restored on Pi Day, power lost and restored on the Ides of March, internet lost on 16 March… Is that a hangover from the Ides of March? Or is it St. Patrick’s Day Eve? Maybe that is why it is taking so long to restore cable and internet. They are at the site of the problem drinking green beer!
So, when the power is out, you can do book research by candlelight or get some sleep. When internet is out, you can do almost everything except publish the post to the site. It is all up to you.
Note: The internet and cable were restored after lunch, the day of this writing on St. Patrick’s Day, about 26 hours after the outage began. But I doubt if they will give us five dollars off the next bill. In all, God provided rest and He provided clarity of mind to get the work done.
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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