Adam Jones, Cyber Hero

His hat says it—THE BEST.

His work confirms it.

Last night our friend Adam came over and restored my computer’s hard drive. The thousands of pages of text and photographs I’d lost back in June are now back on my monitor screen.

Adam’s work makes an enormous difference. For instance, one file I’d tried to restore myself cam eout at 162 pages with one page of footnotes; The same file which Adam restored returned to the screen at 256 pages with three pages of footnotes.

That’s for the same file.

Adam said that one of my file folders ran so huge that it took his computer four hours to copy it.

Although I’d been freelance writing for years before, I bought my first computer back in 1982. Over the years I’ve been moving files from disc to disc and from hard drive to hard drive through a bunch of computers.

My daily diaries, photos of naked internet women, Bible study notes, several drafts of 19 different books, dozens of book manuscript starts, web site materials, old newspaper articles, menus, work schedules – all this stuff disappeared when this last hard drive failed.

Yes, 20+ years of work gone in a tiny electric buzz.

Adam used his cyber skills and computer systems to resurrect the whole lot.

Somehow, he linked my burned out hard drive to one of his computers and jumped files from one to another. Then he took hard drive two and inserted it into the box on my desktop so that I now have two hard drives in the box.

You know something?

Only my name appears on the cover of my books. But the names of a host of other people should be there too. Donald who set me up with computers in the first place. Helen who worked in graphic designs. Eve who researched historical materials for me. Ginny who supported and encourages me in a thousand ways. Wes and Barbara who advise.... and now Adam who recovered all that I lost.

The Lord Christ richly blesses me with family and friends who believe in my work and make it possible for me to do it.

You know, this time in limbo without knowing if my work could ever be resurrected pained me; yet it also proved good for my soul.

While I felt anxious and fretted over loosing so many years of work, yet at the same time, I also reached a point of peace in reevaluating my work. If it had all been lost, what would have been lost?

Do I live for my writing? Or do I live for Christ through my writing?

Which is more important?

This time of trial brings me back to basics. Adam’s cyber skills give me a chance to start anew. Having lost every file, strengthens me.

In a sense, my work is my corn.

I remember what Jesus said about that, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”.

So, my computer is fixed.

What will I find to complain about next?

Ginny says I hold a Black Belt in whining.