Logins
& Passwords
If sheep do not have the constant care of a
shepherd, they will go the wrong way, unaware of the dangers at hand. They have
been known to nibble themselves right off the side of a mountain. And so,
because sheep are sheep, they need shepherds to care for them. The welfare of
sheep depends solely upon the care they get from their shepherd. Therefore, the
better the shepherd, the healthier the sheep.
Kay Arthur
My husband decided he wanted to become
technologically savvy so he asked me to help him get set up with online banking
so he could pay our credit card bill online.
You all know from a previous devotional what a techie I am so I
proceeded to go online and try to set him up.
You notice I said “try”.
It went kind of like this. My husband thought he might have tried to set
this up previously so I started by trying to log him in. Of course he didn’t remember his password or
login since he hadn’t logged in since 2003, so I clicked on the button that
said “Forgot my login ID”. So it then
asks for an email address. So I enter
that and then it asks several questions to try to identify if we are who we say
we are. You know, the make of your mother’s
first car, your paternal grandfather’s cousin’s name, your Dad’s brother’s first
job, your first grade teacher’s name, your wife’s mother’s middle name, the
address of your first house, which grocery store you shop at and where you went
on vacation in 1975. Here’s the
kicker. When they ask about what car you
drove in high school does this mean make or model and don’t you just love it
when they only give you one wrong answer before they lock you out of your
account?
So we finally get the login ID but then we
have to get the password reset. It then
gave us an error message that said they could not reset it and we would have to
call them instead. I guess they were
laughing at our attempts to access our account.
So after we went through the same questions over the phone again we
finally had our password and were ready to go, or so we thought.
We log into the account and we were actually
able to see the credit card statement and it had a little button in the corner
that said, “Pay Bill Online”. Since that
was our whole reason for doing this in the first place I clicked on the
button. It took me to another screen
that told me all about Bill Pay and when I clicked on the button on that screen
and it gave me an error message that said Bill Pay is currently not available
to you at this time. We are working on
it. What does that mean? My husband being the comedian in the family
said “by the time I get this paid it will be past due.”
We worked on this for over an hour and
finally I told Jerry he would just have to call them and pay over the
phone. When he called the first thing
that came up was a survey and it didn’t give him an option to skip the survey
so he had to complete that first. I could hear him in the kitchen mumbling
about dumb surveys and banks and stupidity.
I only caught snatches of the conversation he had with himself as he
completed the survey.
Have you ever wondered what we did before
technology? I am starting to think that
being a shepherd has its benefits. I mean herding sheep is sounding better and
better every day. What better way to
spend our time than with God. If I didn’t have to spend so much time trying
to remember logins and passwords and completing surveys I could spend a lot more
time with our Heavenly Father. Money
under the mattress is sounding better and better every day.
Prayer for the Day:
Heavenly Father, we spent an inordinate amount of time this weekend online and
on the phone trying to pay one bill. I
would have preferred to spend it with You. Help me to remember why I am here on
earth and that so many of the things we do every day are manmade
distractions. Remind me of what is
really important. You.
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