Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
(KJV. Psalm 51:10. www.blueletterbible.org.)
“It’s that time again!” I said to myself in frustration, “Time to defrag the computer.”
Everyone who uses a computer on a regular basis knows exactly what I am talking about. It takes awhile for it to happen, yet it seems to happen suddenly. I can be be-boppin’ along doing just fine when all of a sudden my computer slows down. Impatiently, I find myself jamming on the buttons forcefully attempting to get the poor machine to respond.
“Argh! Now it’s frozen!” I quickly look around to make sure my husband isn’t aware of my plight. He tends to get more frustrated about it than I do.
Why does this happen to computers? In layman’s terms, it is full of unnecessary junk. Somewhere, somehow, the computer likes to store junk. The computer nerds of our day call it cookies, isn’t that a cute name?
“Cute? My big toe!” Did I just say that out loud?
“Mom,” my son interrupts my key pounding furry, “it needs defragged. Do you want me to do it for you?”
I reluctantly give in and hand the laptop over to my teen son who proudly wears his Geek Squad T-shirt he found at a thrift store.
As he sets about, quickly getting things started on the defrag process, I can’t help but put this whole thing into spiritual perspective. How often do we pick up unwanted files that attach themselves into our hardware, or should I say heartware? Words we hear, images we see, thoughts that we have no idea where they came from? Sometimes we don’t realize how much we have stored away until we feel suddenly spiritually slow.
I wonder if that’s what happened to King David before he committed adultery with Bathsheba? It seems as if his prayer in Psalm 51 is the perfect defrag prayer. Many times when I have felt slow spiritually I have returned to this Psalm. More times than I want to admit, God has showed me where I stored something that has slowed me down.
As my son works on the computer’s hardware, I slip away to my room to work on my heartware.
Defrag me, O God, and renew a right spirit in me. Amen.
Read more articles by Marita Thelander or search for articles on the same topic or others.
As a geek myself, I love this devotional! When we get 'fragmented' by life, there is only one person -- Jesus Christ, The Potter who can put us back together. Defrag me, O God... says it all!
