Fax Machine

“Fax Machine”
Lent 2009 – Day 18 (Mar 17)

By Deshi Ramadhani, SJ

I had just finished typing a very urgent document to be immediately e-mailed when the least expected happened: the electricity was gone! Fortunately I had also printed a sample of that document. So I turned to my Blackberry, typed the whole thing as an e-mail message then sent it. After a while I checked the addressee only to get a reply: “Sorry Father, the e-mail has not gone through! Please re-send!” Fortunately the electricity was back, although the internet connection was still down. So as my last hope, I turned back to the fax machine. [Oh how much I fell in love again with that machine in these days of e-mail and Blackberry]. Done! Well, not really. A few hours later I got a phone call on my mobile phone: “Father, there is no e-mail, no news from you!” To me that sounded: “Father Deshi, you are being irresponsible.” I was a bit irritated when I learned a moment later that they had not checked their fax machine, although I had informed them through a text message. That very urgent document has been there for hours! What I thought to be a business done in time, turned out to be half an hour late.

A day like that sounds familiar to you too, I believe. That is one of those moments when I feel that everything goes against me! A few moments earlier everything seems to be perfect. Just a little something out of the plan can easily turn it to be horrible. OK, that fax story is over now. But as I look back, it dawns on me that it is just a mini version of my life. Imagine what God thinks of me: now I’m very good, a moment later I’m a terrible sinner. Sometimes the boundary between what is good and what is sinful is just a thin line. I am reminded to what St. Ignatius of Loyola taught about sin: “It creates disorder!” If God forgives me, it means: “God recreates order.” The same thing happens with other people around me. If I forgive them, I participate in God’s work: “I recreate order in their lives.” No wonder I’m asked to forgive seventy times seven. No limits! Why? Simply because it is about participating in God’s very act of recreating order.

Back to the lovely fax machine that saved my face today, isn’t it true with God’s forgiveness? It’s available for us, but we don’t realize that it’s there because we’re still too focused with the disorder. “God forgives you” says fax message sent to you. Your job is to walk to the fax machine and find the message and believe it. Let God recreate order in your life.