Good morning…
Astute observers of my blog may have asked the same question I did: “Why did the random ‘December 31, 1969’ pop up below yesterday’s post?” Having crafted a different message before I went to sleep, I deleted and switched my original post in the middle of the night. I could delete the old words and paste in the new ones, but when it came to deleting the date, a strange thing happened. ‘December 31, 1969’ appeared out of no where. I tried repeatedly, unsuccessfully to delete it. Then, instead of fighting this odd truth, I joined it. Jumping into the “what is” flow, I googled about this strange occurrence and here is what I learned.
“If you’ve ever had the date on a cell phone or computer mysteriously switch to December 31, 1969, you may have thought it was simply random. But the reason behind this odd glitch is a nice little tidbit of computer trivia.
Unix is a computer operating system that, in one form or another, is used on most servers, workstations, and mobile devices. It was launched in November 1971 and, after some teething problems, the “epoch date” was set to the beginning of the decade, January 1, 1970. What this means is that time began for Unix at midnight on January 1, 1970 GMT. Time measurement units are counted from the epoch so that the date and time of events can be specified without question. If a time stamp is somehow reset to 0, the clock will display January 1, 1970.
So where does December 31 fit in? It’s because you live in the Western Hemisphere. When it’s midnight in Greenwich, England, it’s still December 31st in America, where users will see December 31, 1969—the day before Unix’s epoch. So how do you fix it? Simple. Just correct the date to the present time.” (http://mentalfloss.com/article/26316/why-does-my-gadget-say-its-december-31-19690).
What does this odd fact teach us about our daily life of faith? When strange, random things occur, why fight it? Unable to delete the truth, why not join it? Jumping into the “what is” flow, we are carried on the Current toward new insights, fresh wisdom.
Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how,” Mark 8:34-36 (MSG),
Sue
