The Challenges of Staying Alert

I was driving the family truckster with the camper in tow last Friday, heading for a long weekend of camping, when I received a text message from my cell phone service provider telling me that some changes to my account had been made. I thought that was a strange text, since I hadn't made any changes recently, but it didn't strike me as urgent and I decided to deal with it at a time when I wasn't driving. 

When we arrived at our camping place, which was in a very remote area, I noticed that I no longer had cell phone service. I didn't link this event with my earlier text- although I should have. I just figured that we were out of a service area and I was actually a little happy at the thought of being out of range for a few days.

We got suspicious that something was wrong when we re-entered civilization, but the phone remained without service. I contacted my provider when I got home and they confirmed that someone in New York had hacked our account, upgraded our service plan, and then transferred the plan to new numbers. It took only a few minutes with fraud services, plus a quick trip to the closest store to reactivate our phones to get reconnected to the world, but it was still very unnerving to see again how quickly and easily our personal information can get into the wrong hands.

The lady from fraud services asked me why I didn't call immediately when I received the warning text. I answered her honestly- there were two reasons:

1- I get texts from my service provider on a regular basis (though I admit they are usually offers and not warnings.) But because of the volume, every text just seems like noise and I did not have the time or the inclination to give them any of my attention at that particular moment. The hackers who got into my account didn't know it, but they hit me at a time when I was willingly not paying attention.

2- By the time I did have time to process the meaning of the warning text, my cell phone service was gone and I, as I stated earlier, was kind of glad to think that I was cut off from the world for a little while. Not only was I willingly not paying attention, I willingly didn't care that my phone was disabled.

The Scriptures remind us to be alert and we should be. But it's not always easy. Staying alert is especially challenging when our lives are filled with distractions, false alarms, and non-critical "emergencies" that clamor for our attention. And when you add fatigue and our inherent need for real rest, there may be times when the warnings are real but we lack the energy or desire to respond. This is where the potential for trouble is the greatest.

I'm fortunate today that the damage wasn't much worse. But it was certainly a good reminder to me of the dangers that exist all around us and our need to ready and able to to defend against their attack.