Somebody Stole my Hammock!

I was out surveying the damage from hurricane Gustav today and the first thing I noticed was that I live on an hill in Arkansas, and thus I remembered that our thunderstorms often make Gustav look like getting peed on by a toddler from an overhead balcony. I doubt even a leaf was disturbed from any one of my sensible number of trees.

Secondly, I noticed that my Honduran hammock was missing. It was back in the trees, the only way you could see it was from the driveway of the neighbors who live behind us. I bought that hammock when I was in Honduras on a agricultural mission trip a few months ago. I am supremely bummed out. This marks the second time in as many falls that I have had something stolen, last time it was a quite large watermelon (the one I got to keep was 42 lbs.)

Who is stealing my stuff? And why don't the go for the more expensive stuff like the air compressor or the chainsaw? Who would walk onto my property and steal a freaking hammock for crying out loud. I feel violated. Like somebody sneaked in and put my boxers on their head.

WiredForStereo

Free Cable

We subscribe to cable internet without having cable TV service. In the last few weeks or so, our cable internet connection has gotten steadily worse until the day before yesterday when it just quit. My wife works from home so naturally an internet connection is a pretty heavy necessity. She called the company, and they sent someone out to fix it, and he told her that there was something that died out on the pole, and he had to install a signal booster or something and he apparently took off our filter which filters out the basic cable TV channels.

So now we have free cable.

Now being a moral being as I am, this vexed me. The dude told us that we could have free cable, but the cable company considers it theft. Theft is wrong, a sin. A Jesus Freak should not be a habitual sinner, like when you watch a TV that has service you didn’t pay for.

Additionally, I don’t want to pay $50 for basic cable TV service.

So, what to do.

Anticipating the digital TV switchover, we had planned on buying a receiver box because our receiving of broadcast television has been less than crystal clear, and I like NASCAR and the Daytona 500 is coming up and I like to be able to tell the cars apart.

So, what to do?

After a bit of prayer, I decided that we’d take the simple route and erase off our TV all the cable channels, because I don’t want TV at all much less cable, but my wife does and as the head of the house, I thought it best not to disrespect God, receiving stuff I am not paying for.

The thing that makes it so hard is this is like the perfect crime. No one knows or cares. There is nothing the cable company can do about it because they cannot provide us satisfactory internet service without the extras.

I have asked a lot of people about this dilemma, and have gotten widely varying answers from people I consider very spiritual and in tune with God’s will. Actually most people after a bit of thought said they’d have to suspend judgment.

Bottom line, everyone knows it is wrong, it is just that many people make justifications for it. But ultimately, I won’t have to answer to the cable company, I’ll have to answer to God. And God can do stuff to you the cable company only wishes they could.

WiredForStereo