Tech-NOT-ical

It was a rainy day, so Asherel and I and 2,475,896 other residents of our city went to the mall. We went to the funky music store there to look for Engelbert Humperdinck albums for our senior friends to listen to on our weekly car ride. We were only temporarily waylaid by Aunt Annie's soft pretzles with glaze.

Not only did we find a plethora of Humperdinck albums, but I found a collection of Rodgers and Hammerstein. My family regularly accuses me of not liking music, but that is not true. I cut my teeth on the old musicals, not too unlike the songs my senior friends love, and that is where my musical heart lies. So I clutched the Rodgers and Hammerstein CD to my heart and told Asherel now she would hear real music.

My car is one of those basic types that doesn't even have a CD player. So to play music for Comer and Evelyn, our old friends, we have to plug Asherel's computer into the car and operate the CDs in the computer. But I saw that in this modern day and age, one can actually purchase compact CD players to use in the car! I found one on sale for $15. We hurried out with our bundle of musical nirvana and I told Asherel before we left the mall, we had to test all our purchases out. This particular mall is an hour from us, and if the CD player didn't work, I wanted to return it immediately.

I opened the portable CD player while Asherel cooed, "How cute!" With dismay, I discovered that while it was ac/dc compatible, no plug was included with it. That must've been why it was on sale.
"Come on," I grumbled, "Let's go get an adapter from Best Buy." 
We were parked right outside Best Buy so it was not too awful a journey, though we were both a little tired and anxious to get home. It was almost dinner time, we still had an hour drive, and the caloric effects of the pretzel were wearing off.

I brought the CD player in with me and the manager at the door greeted us.
"This," I said, pulling it out of the bag, "Needs an adapter."
"Ah, right over here," he directed me. He checked the voltage needed, and found me the proper box. It was marked half price, $7.
"Must've been opened," he said. I saw the sale sticker and grabbed it.
"Perfect!" I said.

We scurried back to the car with our new adapter and quickly set about plugging it in. It was a universal adapter and we had a choice of several prongs to plug on its end. Asherel matched the correct size to the CD Player and then she plugged it in. I have an outlet strip that plugs into the car outlet, and that is where she plugged the adapter. We put the new Rodgers and Hammerstein collection in the CD player and sat back with a happy smile.

Nothing. No spinning CD, no telltale on light. No music.

Asherel reread the instructions. One is just supposed to press the play button and it is supposed to work.
"We have to return it," I said, crestfallen. The music store in this mall was literally a half mile walk to the other end of the mall. That is not normally a big walk for us, but we were getting cranky.

So we repackaged the portable CD player, the universal adapter on sale, and trudged back through the doors of the Best Buy, which connected to the rest of the mall. The cheery manager was still at the door.
He glanced at us.
"Remember us?" I said glumly, "It doesn't work. Either the adapter or the CD player is broken. Would you be able to tell which?"
"Probably," he said.  I handed him both our new on sale purchases.
He looked at the back of the adapter. There was a switch with a bunch of numbers.
"Did you turn this switch to 4.5? That's the voltage of your CD player."
"No..."
"Well it is a universal adapter, so you need to adapt it to whatever device you are using. See this number on the CD player here? That tells you what voltage you need. Always check that, because you can burn out your device if you overload it."
"Did I do that to my device?"
"No, you left it on 0. It wasn't getting any juice."
I was collecting it back, a little sheepishly, when Asherel said, "Can we test it here?"
 She did not want to have to trek back in.
"Sure, we can do that."
He plugged in the adapter and pushed the on button. Nothing. No spinning CD or telltale green on light.
He peered at the adapter prong Asherel had selected out of her choice of six.
"This is the wrong one," he said.
I looked at Asherel.
"You picked the wrong one," she said.
"I did not!" I said.
"You didn't?....no I guess you didn't."
"Did you hear that?" I asked the guard standing nearby watching the whole exchange, "She tried to accuse me!"
"I did notice that," he said.
The manager plugged the correct prong and plugged the adapter back in. The portable CD began to spin and the on light came on.

There is a lesson here. There always is. Everything has to be right for the whole to work. All the parts have to be the right part, playing its role correctly or the whole thing falls short. Nothing works. One of the songs I was delightedly singing along with was called "All or Nothing."  That is exactly what had happened with our portable CD player. And it happens with every social unit. It happens with families- if one member is hurting, the whole family unit is broken. It happens with the family of God, too, the Bible warns us. Each of us has our role, our part in the Christian walk, and when any of us stumble, the whole body stumbles. No part is insignificant.  All parts, no matter how small, affect the outcome and performance of the whole. One missing piece and the on button won't come on. It behooves all of us to help each other. We might be just a tiny little prong , but without us, the circuit is broken and the juice is off.

As we drove home, I blasted Rodgers and Hammerstein classics on our new CD player that worked like a charm. Asherel quickly put on her headset and listened to her complete collection of Beatles on her iPod. I sang the whole way home, feeling an affinity with my friend Evelyn with Alzheimers. I cannot remember my son's phone number, but I remembered every song, every word, some of which I had not heard in 40 years.
I have always loved music, I thought, as I sang, just not the music most people of my era love.
"If you can't give me all, give me nothing," I sang, "And nothing's what you'll get from me!"

1 Corinthians 12: 15-26
Now if the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.