The following story made me giggle this week. “A man who allegedly chose “Lloyds is pants” as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of (Lloyds) staff to “no it’s not”.
Steve Jetley, from Shrewsbury, said he chose the password after falling out with Lloyds TSB over insurance that came free with an account.
He said he was then banned from changing it back or to another password of “Barclays is better”.
The bank apologised and said the staff member no longer worked there. ( i bet it did!)
Mr Jetley said he first realised his security password had been changed when a call centre staff member told him his code word did not match with the one on the computer.
“I thought it was actually quite a funny response,” he said.
“I tried ‘Barclays is better’ and that didn’t go down too well either. But what really incensed me was when I was told I could not change it back to ‘Lloyds is pants’ because they said it was not appropriate.
“I asked if it was the word ‘pants’ they didn’t like, and would ‘Lloyds is rubbish’ do? But they didn’t think so.”

“The rules seemed to change, and they told me it had to be one word, so I tried ‘censorship’, but they didn’t like that, and then said it had to be no more than six letters long.”

I found this story rather hilarious!!
We are, obviously, a password-rich society. We all need to remember digits, random letters, maiden names and first pet’s names in order to access current accounts and pay our bills. I hate it when I type in my password and SCARY RED WRITING appears saying “INCORRECT user name” or some such techno-babble-rubbish. I then have to think again of the many pet names Jon calls me on a regular basis and wonder which one I assigned to this particular cyber-beast.

I actually find the subversive nature of the hero of the above story rather heart-warming. He wanted to open his account by declaring that those running his account were substandard. He exercised his right to free speech, only to be told that his speech was… not so free and had to be no more than 6 letters long.

Perhaps he has since had other suggestions made to him by friends and family and potentially even other banks?? Who knows.

The truth is that we don’t need to work hard to get God’s attention. We don’t need any kind of access code or password to be heard in heaven. There are no religious patterns or phrases needed that will impress God with our worthiness. In fact, He likes the opposite!

He likes heartfelt simple genuine prayers made by ordinary people exercising free speech. He doesn’t even mind if what we say is more than 6 characters long. He doesn’t mind our complaints and our grumblings, our achievements and our failures. None of them will get an INCORRECT USER NAME type of response. God always recognises us and accepts us as we are.

Now that’s very good news for me. And for you, and for everyone who has ever lived, or ever will.