Despite 14 years of blog writing, I am still a Luddite when it comes to my knowledge and understanding of computers. I can do the necessary, but should anything go wrong my stomach sinks, my heart pounds a mile a minute, and I go running to my younger brother in Christ who now hosts this blog and makes it run in spite of me.
My new blog has a contact page, just as my old one did, but this one is much easier for me to handle. Unfortunately, it must be much easier for everyone else too because I regularly delete four to five dozen spam (spams?) a week. It doesn’t take that much time—I don’t even have to read past the first three words usually to know it’s headed for the trash bin. What has become annoying though, are the three or four who send exactly the same mail word-for-word, several times a day. No, I am not interested in the $27,000 jackpot, nor the earth-shatteringly inventive dog harness. So my young friend has found a way to block them without them knowing about it and without losing the people who really need to contact me.
That is what worries me—deleting someone I don’t want to delete. Spam filters are notorious for that. They don’t like my email address with the French name. I have lost count of the times my own emails have wound up in the spam folders of people I was trying to reach, so I do not want to do that to anyone else.
We all come with a built-in spam filter. How many times have you seen someone come up your walk and you instantly prepare yourself to get out of the sales spiel as quickly as possible before you even open the door? How often do we see someone come into our meeting places, someone a little bedraggled who seems a bit uncomfortable, and we instantly think, “They want some money?” I wonder how many legitimate opportunities to reach the lost or to help a true brother in Christ we have missed out on. I have told you before of the time we forgot out Sunday clothes when we went camping and had to go to worship in a strange town in our jeans and flannel shirts, only to be shunned as soon as we walked in the door.
Perhaps we should work on un-installing those spam filters. It takes me a whopping 5 minutes twice a week to get rid of the spam, going through it one at a time, but I never miss the contacts I truly need to see from people who need help or just have a question to ask. They are worth the time I spend on the canned pork!
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything1Thess1:6-8.
Dene Ward
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