O give thanks unto the Lord; call upon His name: make known His deeds among the people. Sing unto Him, sing psalms unto Him: talk ye of all His wondrous works. Glory ye in His holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Seek the Lord, and His strength: seek His face evermore.

So what has Jehovah been doing in our family? He took away our computer! We suppose that a windows update we downloaded was incompatible. Anyway, the best we could get was the blue screen of death. I surrendered it to the Lord and asked Him to help us recover all our data. Robert, our family computer expert who designed our family web site hoped that it was only our central processing system and that our files were still in tact. However, he didn’t think we would be able to recover our email messages. Since he was not here, we hired an expert to come and give us a hand with it. Our expert had been the head of the computer department at Salem University and is close to getting his PhD in computer technology. He verified that our files were not harmed and helped us to reinstall windows on a new drive. We hoped to hook up the old drive externally and copy the files over to the new drive. Still he said it would be a miracle if we were able to recover the emails in our messaging system.

Well, miracles are Jehovah’s specialty. I continued to ask Him to help us recover everything, including our emails. The process of reinstalling our computer programs and copying over our files was a bit scary at times, and a couple times we came close to ruining everything again. Finally it was just about back to normal, and all we needed to do was set up our email account again. Although it didn’t work exactly as expected, we imported our address book and relocated the message storage… and now not a single message is lost; even our address book is complete!

It makes sense to me now that I think about it. Our email is very much a part of our ministry, and there is nothing in it that is displeasing to the Lord. The whole problem has worked out for good because we love God and pursue His calling for us. We have learned much and have lost nothing. It was like a very tiny glimpse of Psalm 106:1-8: Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth forever. Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can show forth all His praise? Blessed are they that keep judgment, and he that doeth righteousness at all times. Remember me, O Lord, with the favor that Thou bearest unto Thy people: O visit me with Thy salvation; that I may see the good of Thy chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of Thy nation, that I may glory in Thine inheritance. We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly. …Nevertheless He saved them for His name’s sake, that He might make His mighty power to be known.