So much for updates ........

So ok, tonight I mentioned to a new friend that I had a small blog and he said, "Oh I'd like to see it," I quickly had to tell him, "Well, it's pretty small. There isn't much there and I haven't really kept it up." Oh boy is that an understatement. Despite all my good intentions - and lots of good material - once again procrastination has won and I have failed to follow through. My last attempt was more than a year ago. Um, maybe this would be a good time to rectify that. Well, for now I'm going to send my friend the Spider! story and give him a link here. Welcome Charlie! And I'll try to do better about keeping up with this. I really need to finish writing about "The Hallelujah Mobile" at least!

Code Box Panic

I work at several online jobs, one of which is as a content moderator for a company called Bazaar Voice, which provides software and related services to clients in the area of what is known as social commerce, or marketing via customer generated content, such as product reviews, questions and answers, stories, and so forth. My job is to read, evaluate, accept, reject, code and comment on content submitted by customers of Bazaar Voice's clients.

In addition to a set of basic rules applicable to all content, most individual clients also have personalized guidelines governing their own content, sometimes clarifying, usually adding to or modifying the general instructions. Depending on the specific guidelines applied, we often have to click a small checkbox corresponding to a certain code, and usually write a comment to explain what we've checked and why. 

As I said, these checkboxes are small, so using the mouse to click on them can get a bit time consuming. Since we work under time constraints "hot keys" have been assigned that allow moderators to use the keyboard instead of the mouse to check most boxes, which speeds up the process a little. When you're processing hundreds of product reviews each day, your hand gets into a routine: A for Accept, R for Reject, 2 for this code, 3 for that, 5 for another, and so forth. (Bear with me, I'm getting to the miracle -  this background stuff is necessary to understand it.)

So it was a little over a week ago, on Tuesday November 30 to be exact.

Back again

I started this blog and didn't keep it up. My son accuses me, with some justification I suppose, of indulging in periodic obsessions and then abandoning them. So it's probably not the first or last time I've started something I didn't finish. But for some reason I have it in mind to start over again here. God's little miracles keep happening, and though I usually note them in my very informal journal, and tell people, and sometimes email or post on Facebook, I don't really have a place where they're all collected together. I think I'd like to, both for my own benefit, and that of others who also need to be reminded from time to time that God really does move  and answer prayers, sometimes in startling ways. So. I'm not going to tie myself to any schedule as I've learned that's a good way to set up for failure. But as God moves and leads, I am going to try to note it here. I do hope somebody besides me will read it and be encouraged.   

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies are new every morning. (Lamentations 2:22-23)

Photo credit: "Strange Keyboard" by Rd. Vortex on Flickr

Giant Men

This is not a little miracle. Actually, it's a pretty big miracle. So I wasn't entirely sure it belonged here in this Little Miracle Report, but then I realized yes it does. It may not be exactly "little," it may stand a little taller than small, but it definitely belongs in any report about miracles.

It happened only a few weeks ago, in the middle of January this year 2009, in a small village in West Bengal, India. Two men I know from a small house church I attend here in Austin, Corben and Robert, had decided to make a mission trip to India through an organization called E3 Partners that sends missionaries to remote places in the world to teach people about Jesus and to plant local churches wherever they can. They left in early January and were gone for three weeks. When they returned, they told this story.

Sentence: Deportation

By Saturday, January 10, 2009, the last appeal had been lost. Her bag was packed, and the single 25-year-old mother of three was scheduled to be deported in a day's time.

Yes, the sentence was just. Although here in the U.S. legally with a valid green card, this troubled young woman had repeatedly gotten herself into all manner of serious difficulties, not only bearing three children out of wedlock to two different fathers by the age of 22, but breaking the laws of her adopted country over and over again, racking up tickets and fines and jail time, and finally accruing enough of a record for her visa to be revoked. She'd been incarcerated at the INS immigration detention center in San Antonio for months, while her case wound its way through the system.

The family had rallied around her, pooled their funds to hire a lawyer, done their best to help, but despite months of prayer, visits, hearings, and appeals, the judge's final decision had come down: she was to be deported, sent back to Peru from where she came, with no possibility of return for at least ten years.

Parmesan Provision

Last night God arranged a tasty little miracle for me and some friends. It happened like this ...

A friend of mine who has a ministry to the homeless (see the Spider! miracle) hosts a gathering most Thursday nights for anyone who'd like to help her in her work. We get together and share a meal, which she provides, and then spend the rest of the evening doing whatever work needs doing, which can range from packing bags of hygiene items for the homeless, to assembling cheerful purses of personal products for the streetwalkers, to sorting socks, or hats and scarves, or any of a variety of tasks. Our numbers vary but there are a handful of us "regulars" who usually make it each week.

We'd planned to gather last evening as usual and our host had prepared a spaghetti supper with salad and garlic bread, yum! Earlier in the day another friend had called her and mentioned her hope that there would be some Parmesan cheese. Unfortunately though, our host didn't have any Parmesan cheese on hand, and never did make it out to get any. So as we sat down to eat, the subject of Parmesan, or rather the lack of it, was raised by the disappointed friend who'd been hoping for it. Enter our little miracle.