I waited for the email to drop through the letter box. It was expected but not wanted. To receive the email was confirmation that I was on the list of people who had had their details hacked from EasyJet. This is the second time, British Airways being the first.
So the email was expected and in due course it arrived. ‘We are sorry to inform you… flight details have been hacked… but the card you used and your passport details were not hacked… sorry’, and all that stuff…
Okay it’s not Covid 19, but it is an invasion of trust and calls for me to take evasive action. I find myself sitting at my PC wondering about what I should open, can I trust that source of information, and dare I go online to my bank? The sum total of all this, I feel trapped. I can’t get to the bank without wearing a space suit sprayed all over with gel and worrying about who has touched the keypad that accesses my account. And to make matters worse this space suit doesn’t have pockets so I have no gel with me. Every time I breathe in and out my glasses steam up, so I can’t see properly and asking the uncloaked assistant for help is hindered by my not being heard because I have a space suit on!
Virus: read, hackers are a nasty bunch of people.
There, I have said it. So what is the answer? Covid 19 strikes out where and when it chooses. The unwary are attacked, the wary are attacked – just like virus hackers. Attacking the liberty by which we live and value. Not caring about the consequences of damaged caused. When working in the east end of London many of my client group regularly went off shoplifting; Christmas was a particularly good time. But apart from some personal needs, usually everything that was nicked was sold on for cash. It disappeared into – somewhere, but where, I never did find out, or who bought all this stolen stuff, who was handling the stolen goods? Who buys 2.5 million bits of detail about flights on Easy Jet?
Can it be true that things can be deleted for ever? Spam emails, unwanted messages, historic archived information no longer needed. Delete forever…
But we know that very clever people can delve into the forever digital world that we think we have deleted forever and the truth will be revealed. That’s a bit scary but especially if you’re one of the bad guys; a nasty virus spreader. The bible talks about our lives unfolding at the judgment seat; all will be revealed. A guy I worked with had a long criminal record. He was a thief; in the main he stole high end cars and made a risky but good living at it. He was also a graffiti sprayer, destroyer of other people’s property. He kept photograph albums of trains on the underground he had painted, monuments defaced, and prominent buildings recoated as he changed the façade. Of course he was caught, his pen name, which was very famous (I can’t tell you what it was, but I would hazard a guess you may have seen it somewhere. It was very prominent as you left a particular railway station). Once the police knocked him up they had all the photograph albums, just the thing to send him to jail.
He became a good guy and left the past behind, but on occasions you can still his work in some of the more difficult places to get to, sure his past is out there and has not been deleted forever. But the big difference is that it will not be held against him and he will not be held guilty when he appears before the Lord. What was the bad, what is the past will be rolled out, he will be called to account; and he will be found not guilty because the bible tells us that the price was paid. Jesus took all the bad, the wrong doing, the virus of sin and dealt with it once, and once for all time.
Virus spreaders are a nasty bunch of people. Jesus also has a place for each one of them and it is with gratitude that the virus, sin, has been dealt with. We may be surprised by who we meet in the Kingdom, but, if I catch site of a particular name written in graffiti on the side of a cloud I know who to speak to. However there will be one thing missing in this place. Delete forever.
Photo by Fredy Martinez on Unsplash
