(__) Do you know what this is?

(oo)

/-------\/ Here’s a guess – our little Kiera loves them and can

/ | || make the noise for you! She and Jessica have been

* ||w---|| reading books about them lately, you see!

^^ ^^

I was thinking the other day about this funny old document I had, and still have, from back in the 80’s that was titled “The complete guide to cows.” It was a whole lot of ascii art (that’s what this is, art made from ascii characters) that depicted various cows doing all sorts of things. Scores of them!

You might think “Surely Randy wouldn’t (__)

use some cheap trick like cow images to (oo) o /| /|/|_

grab our attention and make some silly / \/ / / _ /

point or pun!” To which I’d reply / _\===^ ___\_____/___

“Are you crazy, I would never… Hey! ___|__/ |/\ (___________(_)

Isn’t that Mrs O’Leary’s cow?” * ^ ^

The truth of the matter (or dare I say “no bull”) is that as soon as almost all technology was invented people started using it in unexpected ways. Take the camera for instance – in particular the movie camera. When it was first invented the idea was to capture nature and important historic events. Now we have digital cameras that don’t even require us to develop the film!

(__) Yet as good as these things are, you can “cownt” on

(oo) men to find ways to pervert them. One of the first

/'^^^-m things ever filmed was the inventor’s naked wife!

/ '' ` ) For years, people considered movie houses (theatres)

| /| to be as seedy and of ill repute as going to a bar

| | | | or a brothel. (Come to think of it, they’re not much

|_____|_| better even these days!) And digital cameras? They

//|| || were intended to help consumers enjoy photography

* ww ww without the expense or bother of developing that

fragile film, but because of this pornography has taken off at an alarming rate. I mean, if you took nasty pictures on your 35mm and had the drug store develop them, there was a time that the police would come knocking on your door and you would go to jail. Now you can do it all yourself, and no one can hinder you in the least. Isn’t technology just wonderful? <sigh>

So how does this apply to us? Well, at the church (__) (__)

in Corinth the Lord’s Supper was perverted. In the (oo) (oo)

days of Moses, the bronze serpent saved folks but \/--------\/

was worshiped as an idol and had to be ground up | |

some 400 years later. It’s amazing the blessings we ||------||

get from God yet find ways to “push and pull” until ^^ ^^

they “Dolittle” of the good they were intended for.

(__) Lately, technology has been getting lots of blame

______(oo)_____ for helping people sin. Really, though, the sin

( _)_________(__) is there in us all the time, we just use whatever

\ __________/ medium is handy to “express” it. Some folks also

call it “art”. I have a better name for it, one

“cow pie” that’s a bit more appropriate (and moo-ving)

Randy