"No Pain, No Gain"

This is not a theological treatise re the 'problem of pain'... (but then again, maybe it is).
Maybe it's more aimed at the Biblical warning... "If you think you stand, be careful lest you fall."

Bottom line, here I am, the so-called tech adept 'change-agent-wannabee'... hit big-time by the 'Blaster' internet worm that so far has infected appx 300,000 users across the globe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, (Sgt Friday!) I know, I know -- I should have updated my XP the moment Microsoft put us on notice a month ago. But good night, if we ran for cover everytime MS had a security bug, we'd sleep 24x7 with the blanket pulled up over our heads, or do nothing all day but upload updates. Gimme a break; doesn't there have to be a happy medium somewhere?

Oh well. Actually I'm thankful for this worm. Bottom line, it wasn't too effectively damaging anything, and it did issue a stern wake-up call that some of us needed to hear. And spend 2 days getting fixed.

The good from it all? It was the catalyst I needed, to spur me to finally move entirely onto my XP laptop from my half-hearted reliance on my Win98 desktop machine. And that makes me more efficient for the future. So praise God for worms. **smile**

Yeah, maybe there is an application to be found here somewhere in all this, as to why God allows (or even introduces) pain into our lives. After all, even God experiences pain. What a mind-boggling concept... an almighty, all-powerful God... experiencing grief & pain. Wow. How is that even possible? And why would He do it on our behalf? Truly He loves us. And a mark of His Messiahship, was His acts of mercy, identifying with our pain, and His healing us from our (eternal) pain. Awesome.