I had had an itch to write for a time. There was that burn inside to express things, but not to merely express then; to tell them as stories. I tried the modern man’s method, the computer, but it was useless. There were too many distractions. Email to check, blogs to read, no end of other things that could be done without ever leaving the comfort of my seat. No, the computer wasn’t for me. So I tried to write by long-0hand. It was better, but it took too long to get each thought on the page. Finally the idea struck me, what I needed was a typewriter.
A typewriter would be perfect. It would never crash, I wouldn’t have to save my work every five minutes, and the only virus protection it would need would be Lysol. A typewriter was the perfect solution. Typewriters are prettier than computers, more elegant that is, and much more encouraging. What computer ever salved your pride by dinging positively at the end of every line to signify progress?
Yes, a typewriter was the thing for me. But where to acquire an outdated, obsolete, retro beast? I decided the thing must to do must be to keep my eyes open, and be patient. Eventually, I found an ad for not, one, but two free typewriters. . I jumped all over it. I contacted the number in the ad, and arranged for them to be placed outside the person’s doorstep. I showed up at the appointed time. No typewriters, and no one home. I made my way back to my own home, call the number again, and set up a time to try again. My continued endeavors were met, initially, with success. The nice lady handed me the typewriters, free of charge. “Do you know anything about typewriter repair?” she asked. Well, said I, I am fairly handy.
Ha! Handy. Handy fixes plumbing and changes the oil. Typewriters, it turns out, are precision pieces of machinery. There’s not much fooling around inside a typewriter. There are millions of little levers springs, and do-hickies. Edison figured out electricity, but these contraptions would have given him coniption fits.
I just did not have the time to solve all the puzzles of one of these fine, precision instruments. If I could fix one of these, it would be my civic duty to open a business offering my services to all the other starving, eccentric maniacs out there. No, I had other, more profitable, things to do. Or so I thought.
It has been said that God has a sense of humor. As it turns out, I very possibly may have been the brunt of one of His jokes. It looked like an ice storm to me. One couldn’t go outside for two days straight without slipping and ending sunny side up. So, with nothing else to do, and a yearning for a working typewriter, I approached the machine of the two I was less fond of with a screwdriver and a set of pliers.
Getting it apart was easy enough. A few screws here, a spring there, it was open. So far    so good, it seemed. All the parts were carefully organized, as I removed them, on a cookie sheet. With any luck, I hoped, the dog wouldn’t charge through and upset them.
Once apart I began looking at the thing carefully, applying all of the limited knowledge I had acquired over the past few days, assessing the symptoms. Eventually I narrowed it down to one cog that was not turning freely. One cog, which I could see and access from outside before disassembling the whole machine. I decided a little oil should do the trick, and then on to re-assembling it all.
Little did I know, the fun was about to begin. First, as I held a certain assembly, it fell apart. Little balls and washers rolled onto the carpet, like treasure looking for a pack-rat.
The reconstruction process was a long, exhausting one. For hours I assessed and compared parts, probing my memory of where they had come from, what their job was, and how they were supposed to do when placed in their proper location. Eventually I got it back together, the original problem solved. Only, then I had five more problems, each twice as frustrating. One particular assembly of springs and levers would not go back into position correctly no matter what I did. It would have been helpful if I had noticed before ruthlessly disassembling it like an oaf in a butcher shop, how it had sat. But I did not. Somehow I had assumed that it would just go back the way it had been before. It would not. Finally, after much frustration, I gave up, promising to come back later. I set the contraption down, and the assembly slid back into its place.
Finally I put the whole thing back together and typed out a sample sheet. All the keys worked, the carriage progressed nicely, the bell even worked. The only problem was that the keys didn’t print in nice even rows. When I typed across the keyboard (qwerty) the letters ascended in nice little staircases, so that the q, a, and z were at the bottom, and the p, l, and m were nearly a full line higher. When typing words and sentences, the effect was very random. The words gave the impression of a roller coaster, or the back-roads of any given county in the Ozarks. I was baffled and beat. I had a working model of a third grade boy’s dream typewriter. I put it up at last, discouraged.
I sat down with a book to relax and read. I succeeded in relaxing. As I drifted off to sleep, I very dimly though about the problem with the typewriter. Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning in a blue sky, I realized what the problem was, and, as soon as I woke up, I made one small adjustment that fixed the machine’s Jacob’s Ladder complex. I am now the proud owner of a working 1970′s teal Smith-Corona Corsair Deluxe.

The original of this post was composed on a Smith-Corona typewriter.

by Reginald Heber

The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood red banner streams afar!
Who follows in His train?
Who best can drink His cup of woe,
Triumphant over pain,
Who patient bears his cross below,
He follows in His train.

The martyr first, whose eagle eye
Could pierce beyond the grave;
Who saw his Master in the sky,
And called on Him to save.
Like Him with pardon on His tongue,
In midst of mortal pain,
He prayed for them that did the wrong!
Who follows in His train?

A glorious band, the chosen few
On whom the Spirit came,
Twelve valiant saints, their hope they knew,
And macked the cross and flame.
They met the tyrant’s brandished steel,
The lions gory mane;
They bowed their necks the death to feel:
Who follows in their train?

A noble army, men and boys,
The matron and the maid,
Around the Savior’s throne rejoice
In robes of light arrayed.
They climbed the steep ascent of heav’n,
Through peril, toil, and pain;
O God, to us may grace be giv’n
To follow in their train.

St. Augustine deals very interestingly with time in his Confessions. The past doesn’t exist, neither does the future, but the present does. But what is the present but a transfer of the future to the past. So there must be a present of the past, and present of the present, and present of the future. Regardless, we live in time, as God has seen fit to create a world that proceeds from one end to the other. In that time we have cycles of time. Minutes become hours, hours days, days weeks, weeks months, months years, and years one after another. This year, which is proceeding last, causes me to look back and remember the last, which has been significant. A year ago marks when she said yes. She promised to be joined to me, in flesh and mind. She is now my wife, and a wonderful wife at that. She finishes me, helps me, and adds to me. She is bearing the sign of God’s blessing to me. She is Natalie, my wife, and I love her.

I am a father. This is a spiritual reality as well as a physical one. I have fathered a child. That child has an eternal soul. Did I create that soul, no. But I didn’t create the body either. The truth is that a soul has been generated, and I was largely responsible for its generation. It seems then, that this young soul is descended from myself. Myself, who am a member of the covenant body of our Lord Jesus Christ. This covenant has been promised to me and to my children. Baptism is the rite of entry into that covenant. But baptism must be given to those who have faith. And that faith is supposed by many to only be able to be shown when one is able to articulate it. But faith in the Bible is rarely something that is articulated. It is generally something that is acted out. It is something that is closely associated with (get this) little children.

I believe my place in the covenant is one of grace. It is by grace that I am here, it is only by grace that I shall remain here. Even after the resurrection it will be a position of grace. It will be a position that will never change, but it is still one of grace. If my children enter into the covenant it will be because of grace. If they remain in it, it will be because of grace.

Now, I believe through covenant promises that my children will be in the covenant. If this is true, then they will be, already, under grace. Now one of the gifts of grace is faith. It is my understanding that my children are promised faith. If they are promised faith, and are part of the covenant, then they are deserving of baptism, the rite of entry into that covenant and the church.

That is why I plan on baptizing my first child. I understand that apostasy happens. Some fall away. But we serve a gracious God who is faithful to the faithful, and gracious to those who obey His commands and do His will. He is holy and true to His Word. I have faith because He granted me faith, and part of my faith is that He loves His little children, including the ones not yet born.

As I am currently switching to this self-hosting format, you can read all my older posts at my xanga page