Frogger

By Karen King 

Computers have thousands of uses today, but I've never heard of one used in quite the way our first computer was used many years ago!

My husband and I have two children who are truly gifts from God.  We enjoyed every aspect of having children as they were growing up except …HOMEWORK!  By the time the assignments are finally completed, most parents are ready to scream, "Calgon, take me away!”  We were there!

If we are honest, most of us have a few fantasies growing up.  You know some of them:
1. Grow up and marry a handsome Christian prince/princess.
2. Have Ed McMahon knock on your door with all of that money!
3. Finish school and NEVER have homework again!!!

If you are a parent, you know about that last one.  Just about the time you finish your own schooling and homework, along come children with more homework than you ever dreamed of having.

One wonderful day, the solution to our problems came to us.  We would buy a computer.  Now this was in the early days of computers, but we were desperate.  One Saturday we headed to our local computer store, soon we were on our way home with a Commodore 64.

Boy, did we have plans for that computer!  We’d put assignments for the children on it and actually make homework fun, and we could even do our budget on it!  Our days of frustration were about to be over, or so we thought UNTIL we opened the instruction manual, it may as well have been written in Chinese.  It would take weeks just to write one program, of one lesson, for one child! 
However, there was one thing that we all had fun with on that old Commodore 64.  It came with a game called “Frogger” where one had to get a frog to jump from one lily pad to another without falling into the water.  We loved that game!  It was great fun for the children and Bill and I enjoyed “Frogger”, too.  But as with all novelties and games, the new eventually wore off.  The computer was put in the spare bedroom where it collected dust…much dust!!!

One day, God used that computer in a way that I would never have imagined.  I was dusting the spare bedroom and finally came around to the computer and began to dust it.  As I carefully removed all that built up dust from lack of use, I heard deep within my soul the still, small voice of God speaking right to me.  He said, "Karen, your Bible is about as useless to you as that computer.  You haven't really studied it and you don't really have a clue as to the many uses it has for your life.  It is simply something that you read dutifully at night and at church without really grasping so much that is in it for you.  It is My love letter to you!  I know that you have accepted Me in your heart and you love Me, but there is so much more and you are trying to do it the hard way, without Me."

Strangely enough, at that very time, an inductive Bible study was starting at our church.  I knew that was what I was to get involved in.  I believed every word of the Bible from Genesis to Maps, but I began to realize that I was trying to live the Christian life on a starvation diet.  I would let my minister feed me on Sunday morning and Sunday night and then go in on Wednesday for a midweek snack.  No wonder I often felt so defeated in trying to please the Lord and live the Christian life!  As I began to learn to study the Bible inductively, new growth began so quickly that I could not believe the change in my life, others noticed it, to.  Later, I would go through great tragedy.  Had it not been for the learning and the studying of God's precepts and promises that I had done, I would have never made it through.  But I did learn, and God was so faithful!!!!

I had heard the statement, "God can use any old bush", but I never thought He would choose to use that old Commodore computer to draw me to Himself, prepare me for warfare, and bring me through the great storm to come!  God is way ahead of us in the use of modern technology!   "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth." I Timothy 2:15 (NASB)