Love goes on

I am sure you have heard stories of where a soldier from the United States was on assignment over seas and he fell in love with a local native girl. Then he suddenly found out his unit was being shipped back home or he got wounded, or whatever happened, and the romance was sort of left hanging while he had to leave. Perhaps the frustrated soldier did not even get the opportunity to say "Good bye," to the girl he had fallen in love with.

 

Then, as these stories generally go, years go by, and then one day, these long separated lovers somehow find each other once again, and finally the romance blossoms into marriage.

 

These stores have a happy ending, but in the middle, the couple who are in love are torn apart by the ravages of war.

 

In a way, all Christians are at war. Jesus told us that the world would hate us, because they don't understand or know us.

 

But the good news is that God won't ever forsake us or leave us. In fact, even though this war for our souls may grow really severe and prolonged, it cannot separate us from God's love.

 

We read what Paul wrote in Romans 8:38-39, "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

 

Wow. NOTHING is able to separate us from God's love. The devil may even kill us, but even death will not separate us from God's love. God will simply resurrect us back to life (much like the solder reuniting with his lady friend) and take us to heaven to be with Him.

 

In fact, Jesus second coming is likened to a bridegroom coming for his bride.

 

Oops, I am out of time for for today. But we will continue this thought in part two tomorrow.

 

Sincerely,

David A. Youngs

Mental illness vs. mental health and computers

Dear reader,

Mental health is just as much a part of health as physical health. I have several friends who are "over the edge" emotionally. They all react far too much to external events. One of them is a certified genius, but because of his constant over reaction to external events cannot hold a job. Let me give you a concrete example. I will call this friend John. John is so super smart that sometimes it literally amazes me. He writes html code freehand without any programs to assist him. He knows UNIX and DOS commands extensively. He has rented a remote server to host web pages and he sets up and manages this entire server in UNIX at the command prompt. No simple interfaces for John. They just get in the way. He is hosting my personal web at http://polybids.com/ and several others I am developing. He can set up an entire hosted domain on his server in under half an hour, entering complex esoteric commands at the UNIX prompt. He is definitely a genius. He cobbles together computers from discarded parts other people throw away, and they actually work.

Any way, periodically John will call me up and threaten to commit suicide because his server is down. Or somebody at the place he is renting his server from has closed down port 25 and now he cant get or send email and it is obviously the end of the world. John will seriously be considering jumping off the bridge and ending it all. It's like "my computer crashed and I am doomed.... I might as well die."

Now when my computer crashes, it annoys the **** out of me. But I don't want to die. I just want to get a much better computer. And I immediately begin reinstalling Windows XP or whatever I need to do to get the computer up and running again. So why is it that some people seem to be ruled by their emotions? Is this a form of mental illness, or, is it just a series of poor choices?

Think good thoughts
David A. Youngs
polybids@yahoo.com