Built to Retry

Every time you send an email, stream a sermon online, or submit a prayer request through your church's website, something remarkable is happening beneath the surface. The internet runs on a protocol called TCP — Transmission Control Protocol — designed in 1974 by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. What makes TCP extraordinary is its stubbornness. When it sends a packet of data across the network, it waits for confirmation that the packet arrived. If no confirmation comes, TCP does not shrug and move on. It sends the packet again. And again. It doubles its wait time each round — a strategy engineers call "exponential backoff" — but it never stops trying. The entire architecture of the modern internet is built on a refusal to quit.

There is something deeply scriptural in that design. Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper season we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9). Notice the structure: send, wait, send again. The harvest is not promised to the one who sends once, but to the one who does not give up.

Some of you have been praying the same prayer for years. You have been showing up for a wayward child, a struggling marriage, a ministry that feels invisible. Take heart. You were built for retry. The God who designed persistence into the very fabric of how machines talk to each other has woven that same tenacity into your spirit. Keep sending. The confirmation is coming.