Against my better judgment, I finally did it. I dreaded it, I fought it, I stuck my head in the sand hoping it would go away, but it wouldn't. I knew it would take a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a lot of tears; that's why I didn't want to do it. I'd heard bad things about making this change in my life, horror stories from those who had tried to do it but came back to the old ways. It's too restrictive, they told me. Every time you turn around , it's "You can't do this" or "You can't do that." Deep down, though, I knew it was the right thing to do, and that even I would do it sooner or later.

It was a whole way of thinking that had to change, and most of my friends were giving me that outcast kind of feeling. They'd talk about cool things they were doing, but then they'd look at me and say "Oh, but you wouldn't understand since you can't do that anymore." They'd laugh and shake their heads at me, calling me foolish Randy. They were sure I'd be back, that I'd give up this new way of thinking, but I haven't so far. In fact, I'm plowing ahead, embracing the change, getting all I can out of it.

You might think, since this is a Sunday bulletin, that I am talking about becoming a Christian. Actually, no. I am talking about Windows 2000. Last Monday, Windows 95 ate my computer (once again). Since I have this habit of keeping all windows related stuff on one disk, and all my actual DATA on another, I managed to keep the things that are important to me. My Atari/video game making stuff, Quake of course, the church duty roster, even my old bulletins all survived. But Windows, ALL the apps that are inbred into windows, and anything else that happened to be living on the primary drive got munged/eaten/destroyed by the evil OS known as Windows 95. It was a complete disaster, as far as I was concerned, as I could not resurrect even bits and pieces of apps. And it's not the first time, and I am tired of it.

So I loaded Windows 2000, even though others told me not to. Sure enough, there were some things I simply can not do any more, some programs I can no longer execute. But many things are better than ever, and work as they should have. Now, I am in NO WAY endorsing any product. Those who know me know what I think of the evil empire (come on, I work at Sun, that should say it all right there!). But it got me thinking about people becoming Christians, and a couple other things too.

For instance, if I had done the right thing (moving to Windows 2000) BEFORE my crash, things would have been much smoother. I would not have lost my apps and been forced to download them from the web. I would have had a less chaotic transition. Sometimes it just takes a horrible catastrophe in a person?s life before they finally decide to obey God, and that?s too bad. You know, though, since I had to re-download those apps anyway, I ended up downloading the latest and greatest copies. My software overall is probably better, more improved at one fell swoop (one fell PAINFUL swoop) than it has been in a long time. A person who eases into Christianity will probably improve themselves a little at a time, rather than all at once, growing into the spiritual person God would want them to be. Many don?t see the urgency in becoming perfect, upright in God?s sight, and may never ?upgrade? themselves in all areas. Having a sudden, dire need of God certainly puts your focus at 100%. I'm not wishing everyone would suffer through a terrible crisis that forces them to admit their need of God, but isn't it too bad that many people just never seem to grasp this fact any other way?

Randy