Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

Part one is here , but it has no real bearing on this post so don't even bother going there. If you don't understand what I am talking about, well, it is probably because I am not as clear as I need to be and my previous post will not clear things up. In viewing this world, this life, as a hospital more than a resort I got to thinking about my relationship with hospitals. When I am in a hospital, or there is a loved one in one, my first question is always "When can i [or you] get out of here?" There is something very foreign about hospitals - every one in there in convalescing to one degree or another and it is nothing like the world at large (or is it? Actually this is where my previous post would help clarify things a bit so go there  if you want to). I want to leave and leave, probably, sooner than I should. But, I am under the care of people that know a lot more about the implications of my malady and they are the ones who will let me know when it is safe to leave...

I had this entire blog post ready to go a couple of days ago and then I slicked the "Start a New Post" link in Scribfire instead of the "Publish Post" button. Yeah, duh. I have blogged about this before , but I was thinking anew the other night in Community Group about this world, this life, as more hospital than resort. I know that when I look at this world as a hospital where medical treatment is rendered to my broken heart and soul my expectations are much more in line with what I receive. I find that I am less disappointed with what is going on around me and more reflective on what I need to change about me or cognizant of the Physician that is involved in my healing. But that is actually ancillary to my post. I have found that when I am in a with someone who is recovering in a hospital that they are disturbed all of the time either by nurses or doctors as they administer medicine, take care of one need or another, or monitor vital signs to determine whether the...

My mother is getting a new knee today. I know that the operation is routine and that the recovery is going to be slow, and hopefully sure, but I am so glad that is not where my hope lies. I remember leaving the hospital a while back after a pre-surgery visit with some unbelievers and thinking how awful I would feel if I had to rely on doctors or hospital staff for the well-being of my loved one. That would be terrible for me to leave anyone in the hands of frail, error-prone people. Thanks be to God I can commit the care of my mom into His capable hands rather than someone else's. I know that she loves Him and His Son as well and that in the trying days to come she will rely on His strength and He will speak peace into her heart through it all. But, as significant as a knee replacement and the source of my hope is, that is not the point of my post. Ultimately my mom's surgery is not about a new knee and a better quality of life. That is a goal for sure, but it is a lesser goa...

I have two sons. I remember when we brought the oldest son home from the hospital and we laid him in the bassinet that we had set up for him. We were wondering what to do next. He had nursed well at the hospital and we were pretty sure we knew what to do if there was any type of real danger, but we really had no clear idea what the ensuing day, let alone months, were going to bring. We muddled our way through it and messed up a lot of things. It was good to go through all of this together, but we were only marginally helpful to each other through the whole thing as neither of us really had any clue what to do. We were in the same boat together, however, so we knew that if it went careening down the falls we would all go down together. Thankfully that never happened. Fast forward to the past couple of weeks with our oldest son. We are at a period in his life where there is a lot of change happening in his life. Dare I say that it is even more profound than his exit from his mother and i...

I don't know why I am bummed about it. I really shouldn't be but I am. One of the first proofs of God's existence that I had been exposed to was a rationalist one put forth by Descartes which fell under the category of an ontological argument. Basically it says that God is a being that holds all perfections and that existence is a perfection so God must exist. That's all well and good, but it suffers from a variety of issues I am afraid. Most of the issues can be overcome to one degree or another, but there is one that I think makes it just a bad argument from a natural reason or a rationalistic perspective: the definition of existence as a perfection. In order to hold that it is better for there to be something (existence) rather than nothing (non-existence) I would have to approach the argument with a certain presupposition, namely, one that espouses a Biblical worldview or some other one that holds that belief. Believe me, I am a firm presuppositionalist as I see tha...

One of our sons pulled a doozy at school not that long ago. It was the latest incident in a series of incidents that seemed to be forming a bit of a pattern and we needed to put a stop to it pronto. We received an email that we didn't expect to receive from a teacher and, as parents, we went from 0 to 60 faster than the Rockin' Roller Coaster at Walt Disney World. One thing we absolutely had to do was mete out some consequences for the infraction that went above and beyond the natural ones caused by the choices he was continuing to make. And that is where the wheels came off for me. We were both stressed. My wife was probably a little more stressed than I was because, well, that is her nature and the boys were expected home at any minute. In the midst of the confusion and the not knowing what to do she hit me with the task of coming up with an appropriate consequence that would get at his heart rather than just his activities for the weekend or some other area of his life. She ...

A big thank you to all of you that read the title as "Distracted by my colon" rather than "Distracted by a colon." The former title would have made it a much better blog post. Philippians 3:13-14 was read when I was with the church yesterday and I followed along in my TNIV: Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead... It's a small thing, really, that colon after the word "do" and before the space that immediately precedes the word "Forgetting". Yet it was enough of a distraction to me that I wrote "Distracted by a colon - blog post" on the top of my bulletin so that I wouldn't forget to offer another example of my shiny ball syndrome that plagues my mind. The virtue of the month for our kid's program is determination and I seem to be needed a lot more of that than usual lately. I have been doing some proofreadi...

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1:17 I was thinking about gift giving over Christmas and was wondering about its ramifications (someday I will remember that ramifications has one "m") as I drove into work this morning. As God's image on the earth I should imitate Him by giving gifts. Some of these gifts can be of the traditional wrapping-paper-and-bow-variety while others can be more of the gift of my presence or attention to the people that I love and have been called to serve. Whether I choose the one gift type or the other I am acting like God when I give gifts - I fulfill what I have been called to do (bear God's image) by doing things that He does (giving gifts). But then I wonder about the whole gift-giving process. Of course I can't leave well enough alone so I wondered whether the emotions that I feel in the pursuit of the perfect gift and the pl...

Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen! Revelation 7:12 I am not quite sure what to make of this half-baked idea, but here it goes anyway. On Sunday (was it Sunday night or Sunday day?) I sang a song with the the church I gathered with that largely followed the above passage from Revelation. I am getting my head around the "glory" part of the whole thing, but what struck me is that this proclamation of who God is and what we need to ascribe to Him includes wisdom. This is something that I have been thinking about lately as I look at how I know stuff. I tend to think that I can use my reason to come to a more complete knowledge of the world. If something seems reasonable to me then it seems like I can hang my hat on that thing. For example, if I can see a connection between praying and good things happening (even if that good thing is becoming more like Christ by imitating him) then I go ahead and do it...