What code are you written in?

I realize I haven't posted in a while. I apologize. Life got in the way. I'll try harder to not allow life to keep me from my cyber-duties. Moving on.

I recently reevaluated and reconstructed the website for our church's student ministry, e.merge, at Oak City. It was a very painful and tedious yet educational and inspiring experience. I am not a web developer, nor do I claim any expertise on the subject. That's why I used iweb. But I found it to be extremely interesting and boring at the same time. Is that even possible?

I found it extremely interesting because everything you see, a picture, a video, a link to another website, a color, a background, the illumination of a word as your cursor scrolls over it, the website itself on a website is written in some kind of code. I will spare you the assortment of code there is in developing a website, but trust me there are many. I found it extremely boring because someone had to sit down and type out every punctuation, letter, and number for a particular code in order for that particular website to be a visual sensation for particular eyes to feast upon. Depending on the code used for the website will determine what the website will look like.

Once the website is developed it is never finished. Because the maintenance of a website is ongoing unless of course it is abandoned. That is what had happened to our first student ministries' website. It was left abandoned and became outdated and was ultimately left for cyber-death. R.I.P.

I find that my physical and spiritual life is a lot like this. My life may have developed, but it isn't finished. So I find myself constantly maintaining my physical and spiritual life in some capacity or another in order to improve it. Physically, I try to watch what I eat and drink. I monitor how much sleep my body needs (which is a lot apparently). If I don't exercise I find my body going into atrophy (which is taking place as I type). It's an ongoing process. It also could be called aging if you wanted to get technical about it for all you technical jerks out there.

Spiritually, it is a lot of the same process as the physical one. I watch what I digest spiritually through television, music, literature, and art. And I balance that diet with exercise in Scripture, meditation, and prayer. If I abandoned my physical body the consequences could be countless; possibly and ultimately death. But if I abandon my spiritual body the consequences are eternal.

Just as code written for a website will determine it's appearance, the code you use spiritually will determine the way you act, think, and appear physically. The good thing about code is it can be reevaluated, reconstructed, and rewritten when we revisit the website of life. We are renewed and resurrected in Jesus Christ which gives us the power to e.merge from...self-abandonment.