Avoiding the Kludge

By now much time had passed, and the voyage was already dangerous. Since the Fast was already over, Paul gave his advice and told them, “Men, I can see that this voyage is headed toward damage and heavy loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives.” But the centurion paid attention to the captain and the owner of the ship rather than to what Paul said. Since the harbor was unsuitable to winter in, the majority decided to set sail from there, hoping somehow to reach Phoenix, a harbor on Crete open to the southwest and northwest, and to winter there.– Acts 27:9-12

Albert Einstein called it intuition. We know more than the statistics and numbers can tell us. Quantitative analysis will fail us, and computer models will lead us astray.

The Lord will give you meager bread and water during oppression, but your Teacher will not hide Himself any longer. Your eyes will see your Teacher, and whenever you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you: “This is the way. Walk in it.” -- Isaiah 30:20,21

Call it intuition or insight or whatever you like; it is the voice of the Lord.

When I find myself in a strait of my own making, I have a choice: to flee for a more commodious, more forgiving harbor, or to face the certainty of “meager bread and water”. The meager bread doesn’t sound too appealing but it an offer from God of minimal loss. Had the captain and the ship’s owner endured the difficulties of the Fair Havens harbor as Paul recommended, they would have saved their ship and cargo.

In the time of oppression, I am not abandoned. I have the promise of enough to get through it, and more importantly, the promise of God’s presence in greater clarity and assurance than ever before. It may not be enough to make me welcome hardship, but it should be sufficient to let me meet it with a smile and an even temper.

Turning to the right or left is not about some weighty spiritual decision. It is about taking the off-ramp before we hit the traffic jam on the morning commute. It is that sudden insight into what seemed like an unsolvable problem at work, or why the trimmer just quit working, or how to put the new wood chipper together. Life, every bit of life, mundane, routine, drudge life is as much a part of our spiritual journey as the most sublime mountaintop experiences. Life doesn’t imitate art. Life is art.

The road to hell is one kludge* after another.

* "But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge. Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I explained yet about the bytes?" -- source unknown, vintage definition of the kludge in programming