Raindrops near the coffee cup today

With the rain keeping the screen porch off limits today, my coffee stayed warm on the windowsill and I pondered what could be added to the devotion I had just read:

"We may not think about it but we have allowed the useful tools of technology to take us away from God.  We have become so great in our thinking that we do not think about our God who has provided us with all things.  We still say that we believe God but we do nothing to serve Him or honor Him.  We give lip service to God but not a heart service.  We have grown heavy, plump, and stuffed on our own thinking and desires. 

When we neglect God we forget what God has done for us.  It is time for us to return to the God who made us great.  It is time we begin to honor God with all that He has given us.  We must return to God and God alone.  The false gods of this world can do nothing for us.  Our politicians and our economy can do nothing for us.  It is time to return to the Rock of our Salvation.  And that Rock is Jesus.  Only God can bring about a renewed zeal in the people of America.  It’s time for America and her people to go on a “Diet of God”.  When God becomes first we become blessed once again.". --Tom Doty

All I can add is 'Amen'...and my usual remark about praying for God to have mercy on us instead of asking for more blessings.

If These Become Silent, The Stones Will Cry Out

Look closely at my culvert. It is rising. Or the ground is sinking. There is less and less chat & gravel on the driveway. Our lawnmower is making increasingly frequent loud crashes as the blades encounter rocks that simply were not there the last time. I am stubbing my toes where grass used to grow; now where newly-emerging rocks have appeared that 'weren-there-the-last-time'.

Jesus said that if we don't start praising Him, that even the rocks will cry out.

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” But Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!” -- Luke 19:39-41

Are His disciples being rebuked? Have they become rebuked? Have we become silent? Were we ever His disciples?

Another Delicious Morning--Fall is Here!

Even my normally cremed & sugared coffee has taken on a seasonal orangish-yellow tint, indicating that morning scripture studies on the screen porch may soon be getting too chilly for shorts and a tee-shirt.

Reading through Jesus' words in Matthew where He chided his followers for not understanding the parable of the leaven, my "Aha! moment" left me with a smile: I finally understood one of those 'riddles' without having to read it again and again. That sparked a renewed desire for another session of the 'Sermon On The Mount', or what we call 'The Beatitudes'.

A couple of short interruptions when the horses made their presence known. I peeked over the fence and and gazed while they forraged for grass in a rocky spot.

Sensing my presence, the seven abruptly whinnied, nickered & snorted while galloping away in a thunderous clomp.

Time to check the peapods on the way back to the Bible study.

Indeed, although my smile returned as I perused Jesus' blessed words, the cool north wind had turned my morning coffee nearly ice cold, and the bookmark fell at Chapter 16.

 

 

  

It's so pleasant on the screen porch with the breeze, the garden, the horses, and the Lord...

Traumatic Brain Injury in 1996

     
From Valedictorian of her high school class...to well-known radio DJ...to traumatic head injury, University Hospital, Children's Hospital, Neurological Rehab, and marriage......

Our 19 year-old daughter was in a very serious car accident January 2nd, 1996 and the Lord saved her life. Here is a brief summary of those events and how she truly is a miracle child. 

This blog is a compilation of thoughts, memories, and diary entries from my wife and I, hence the variation in narrative form.

When her Chevy Cavalier was broadsided by a Ford Bronco, she suffered a "traumatic brain injury" better known as a TBI...her brain actually shook and rattled inside her entire skull creating extreme (and as the doctors said, 'catastrophic') diffuse damage to the brain caused by it being rattled around within the skull. Imagine being a parent and being told your daughter has suffered a 'catastrophic brain injury'. She also incurred a punctured lung and a broken collar bone. Because of icy road conditions, helicopter transport was "out, and ambulance took her to the nearest University Hospital, 150 miles from the accident. She had virtually quit breathing, so remained on a ventilator at University Hospital for two and a half weeks; being in a coma for twelve days. We had no cellphones, only the hospital phone booth..and calling relatives with news of the accident was not easy. I was so upset my fingers slipped in the dial and had to leave all the calling to the wife. She ended up handling all the phone calls; incoming and outgoing. I slept on the floor of the emergency room for six nights...people were coming and going all night long, gunshots, fights, murders. I remember sharing the Gospel with a Mexican family in the middle of the night. And I remember a preacher coming in and shouting "Does anyone here need a miracle?"

I remember hundreds of her friends came to visit her; many from her college sorority. Nearly all of them would just 'stand there' and stare. Very few would do anything but occupy space. I can remember talking to her constantly, reading scriptures, talking of events, places, people. Touching her face, arms, feet...literally anything that would be likely to stimulate her mind. At one point, I asked the visitors to please speak aloud, talk of familiar events, in hopes the stimulus would help her come out of this coma.....

Psalms 23:4 frequently went through my mind "...Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me..."I can remember emphasizing the "valley", as this was, indeed, a 'valley-of-the-shadow-of-death' and not death itself. We knew that she would be made whole.

She took her first breath on her own in between ventilator breaths on the fifth day (still in coma)...and woke up from the coma on the twelfth day. She developed a bad staff infection during the first month so she was in neuro intensive care for three weeks before being moved out of NICU.

One week later she was moved to Children's Hospital, where she remained for two and a half months. At first, she went through an awful period of 'agitation'. We thought she was trying to ride a bicycle...but the constant leg 'peddling' movements (day and night for days and days) were only a neurological response to the brain's healing. When this 'agitation' period ended, she began more therapy -- physical, occupational and speech. When we first arrived at Childrens, they told us they even had a 'gym'! Wow, I thought..a gym? Do they play basketball, etc? Little did I realize that the 'gym' was a room full of beach balls and other stretching tools for decreasing the body's 'tone', to help return the drawn-up arms into a normal 'range-of-motion', even using serial-casting (progressively changing casts on her arms and feet to help combat the tone that was drawing her up to the fetal position). She had to be taught everything all over again. I remember the speech therapist coming every day with her 'odor kit', little bottles of all kinds of smells designed to stimulate the brain.

She started talking on her father's birthday ( February twenty third), which thrilled him, and started eating solid foods the first part of March (up till now she was getting formula thru a stomach tube). At Children's, we were able to stay twenty four hours-a-day with her for those two and a half months. We lived at Children's hospital. The 4th floor was our home for nearly three months. I can remember wheeling her around the entire hospital. I'd push her around every floor, take all the elevators, even push her through basement passageways. She loved 'Dr. Pepper', and as her recovery progressed, I'd push her up to the Dr. Pepper machine in the hallway and she'd mumble "Dudda purper, dudda perper!" while moving her right index finger towards the machine. When the therapists wheeled in a vertical body-stretching machine, she'd point at it and exclaim 'get that contraption outa here!' And oh, I remember the big beach balls...I am sure she delighted in having to stretch on those. Later, she'd stare at photos on the wall of her radio DJ studio, her basketball games, and school activities and burst into tears, crying "I want my life back".....

After extensive rehab there, she left  Children's in a wheelchair the middle of April and entered a neurological rehab center an hour's drive further west  for post-acute rehab. The Lord provided a rent-free home for my wife about twenty miles from the ranch so she could be with her as much as they would allow -- which was quite abit. I returned to work, after living in the hospital all this time. Within three weeks of entering the neuro rehab center, our daughter was using a walker (this is May) and by June was using a cane. By the end of July, she was walking on her own. At the end of June, she went to "phase three" (independence) -- she had to be able to bathe, dress, make her bed, and do her laundry. She had other chores as well...like share in the meal planning and making...even drivers "re-training". She got to go to the movies and shopping and come home on weekends. She was discharged from  on October eleventh. ..and has come a long way, but still has a long way to go.

UPDATE as of May 9, 1997 She's sharing an apartment with her Mom and a girlfriend while she takes out-patient therapy 5 days a week, and also is taking one class at the state university she had been in at the time of her wreck..

UPDATE as of August 4th, 1997 our daughter is now on her own.....she is now able to drive...and she has purchased a new Chevy S-10 pickup.

UPDATE as of December 1997 She had her broken shoulder fixed....will be wearing a sling for another couple weeks. She now lives at home with us. Continues to improve...but a head injury takes many, many months and even years to heal. She is now starting to write better with her right hand.

UPDATE as of April, 1998 Collarbone now healed. She's back to driving again.....trying to find work. Has applied at Walmart, etc. Please keep us in your prayers.

UPDATE as of December 1998 thank God for Walmart...she's been working in one since this past summer, has found a wonderful boyfriend, who also works there, and is now ENGAGED to him! they plan to be married after he has a couple years of college.

UPDATE as of January 2001 She has moved into her OWN apartment!

UPDATE as of February 2004 She's married!!!!!!

Thank you for all your prayers...and may the Lord Jesus Christ bless you every day, especially in your times of needs...as he has during ours...which continue on a daily basis.

NOTE: She is a favorite of all the customers in the Walmart store...and is not shy in her witness of the Lord Jesus Christ................

View the video at She Didn't Ask For January 2nd 1996

Morning Coffee with Paul in Athens

While enjoying a cup of coffee, the beautiful breezes this fine fall morning, and an absolutely amazing, awe-inspiring prodding of the Holy Spirit to study in Acts, I was reading that while Paul was in Athens, he of course noticed all the "monuments". I assume he saw the Parthenon, the Acropolis, and all the other temples to all the gods of this and that that I remember reading about in 8th grade World History. Paul notices one marked "To The Unknown God". WOW. It hit me there right at that point! Paul had been approached by philosophers of "this-and-that" who said 'hey, tell us what YOU believe, as we are interested in learning about this-and-that'. WOW. That marker to 'the unknown god'.

It may have meant "to whatever god we've left out in all our construction of these temples and monuments", or "to whatever god there is we can't come up with yet"...but to ME, it meant "to GOD, we don't know Him". What do you think?

Anyway, that's what Paul went on to explain to the Athenian philosophers when as he shared the Gospel message:

Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it —He is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. From one man He has made every nation of men to live all over the earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live, so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring. ' Being God's offspring, then, we shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.

"Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has set a day on which He is going to judge the world in righteousness by the Man He has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead."

When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him. But others said, "We will hear you about this again." So Paul went out from their presence. However, some men joined him and believed, among whom were Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Again, I say WOW! So let me kinda summarize the scriptures here, a little editorial license?

1) The God who made the world is lord of heaven and earth.

2) He doesn't live in buildings or shrines, and is not made of gold, silver, stone...or anything we could dream up in our imaginations!

3) Out of Adam he made every man, he gave all of us breath and life...and determined where and when we should live, and set up the boundaries.

4) He created us to SEEK Him, to 'REACH OUT and FIND Him', though He is not very far away!

5) We can not serve Him by doing 'things'.

6) We have been ignorant of Him for far too long, He now commands us to repent, to turn from our sin, because we will soon be judged through the righteousness we have from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Isn't this THE GOSPEL MESSAGE....what's supposed to be said when 'sharing the Gospel', it is what's to be proclaimed while embarking on 'the great commission'?

I'd say Paul's message at Athens is that we are to seek, reach out, and find the Lord....wouldn't you?