#1891 Serpent Immolation

#1891

Serpent Immolation

"A Change Would Do You Good" - Sheryl Crow

     Ten years living in a paper bag,
     Feedback baby, he's a flipped out cat,
     He's a platinum canary, drinkin' Falstaff beer,
     Mercedes rule, and a rented leer.

     Bottom feeder insincere,
     High fed low fat pioneer,
     Sell the house and go to school.
     Pretty young girlfriend, daddy's jewel.

     A change,
     (A change would do you good)
     Would do you good,
     (A change would do you good)
     I think a change,
     (A change would do you good)
    Would do you good.
     (A change would do you good)

In a world of warped values, you are either an embarrassment to your family or your family is an embarrassment to you.  Think of two recent democrat presidents and their brothers, Billy Carter and Roger Clinton.

Anyone crazy enough to kill someone does not think like the rest of us.  Yet, sinners actually think that there is a technology that will solve every problem.  FOR ONE TO HAVE FAITH, HE MUST FIRST HAVE DOUBTS.  A "faither" lives his belief every minute of every day...not just a Sunday Believer.  The faither stands behind a fortress of gospel music-Christian messages; he cannot hear enough of God's love for him:  God's concern for him.  There is no wealth imagined in the neural wiring (brain) of man that can be comprehended, sovereignty of God, power of prayer to God.  There is one thing that all killers-robbers-lovers have in common, a mother.  This writer was hitchhiking home from college (UNC Chapel Hill) a driver had dropped me off just across from Central Prison near Raleigh.  I was standing out trying to catch a ride and some men, seeing the college stickers on my bag went to heckling me about the ball team.  They were so friendly, wanting to talk with me that I walked over to see what they were doing.  They were digging a grave.  I was standing in the prison graveyard: graves unmarked with tombstones, just a metal IDs sticking in the ground.  Nearby, out of a van, a cheap coffin-like box.  One said, "This one will not be a problem to anyone else, he was killed last night.  Would you like to see him?"  I passed on that but it occurred to me that he was some mother's son.  That at one time in his life he had been a cute-cuddly baby.  Today, dying in prison, buried like a dog, not one family member, not one minister to say some words over him.  WHAT HAPPENS TO ALL OF US? 

I believe in God's word as much as I believe I am breathing.  It started in the Garden of Eden, a perfect place.  Creator God, who knows everything, surely knew that man would mess things up.  His only parameters to our first parents, first human beings, Adam and Eve, "Don't touch that tree."  This writer despises snakes but we believe that the first serpent was beautiful, enticed Eve.  Science tells us that the first snake probably walked, had arms and legs.  Development in this case went backwards because biologists find that there are vestigial (small remnants of something once much larger) appendages in the skeleton of a snake.  Surely this animal was beautiful, the most cunning (Genesis 3).  Most of us are afraid of snakes, so this one must have been enticing, as sin always is.  I believe that otherwise, Eve would have fainted or run from the talking snake.  Of course, she stood right there alongside her hen pecked husband and, of course, everyone wants to blame, Adam blamed his wife, Eve blamed the snake and, at that time, the snake did have a "leg" to stand on.  It all got started there, temptation, disobedience, and blame. 

Christians, believers, are warned about being unequally yoked with unbelievers.  A psychologist told me that 80% of all mental illness can be traced to conflicts with one's religious beliefs.  We hold onto our religious convictions and yet constantly bombarded by the nonreligious beliefs and actions of unbelievers.  We are supposedly a Christian nation.  Yet, when Vietnam fell, Saigon fell, the North Vietnam leaders upon entering defeated Saigon, where America had made it's last stand said, "Get rid of all this western decadence."  (USA bars-strip clubs-sex shops)  I have known so many, that never have experienced the born-again experience, attending church (never understanding what was going on) trying to fit in as at a civic-golf-country club.

This writer had one aunt and uncle (my mother's sister) who had a daughter with a deformed arm.  My aunt had dragged her husband into the church house over and over, he was just there, never convicted-concerned-convinced.  She dragged him to the meeting of a well known faith healer along with the daughter, the daughter was not healed and the uncle became more distant in any belief system he might have.  When you wave the Christian flag, you are at war with the world; you better have the righteousness of Jesus in you.  In times of silence, God makes himself real and you will have much loneliness holding on to your Christian faith: the history of faith is the history of doubt.  Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not.  With the righteousness of Christ within you, the new birth experience, your truth will supply your every need...a firewall against satanic serpents, satanic addictions, and satanic temptations. 

Religion is the most polarizing subject in the world.  I have great skepticism with those who cannot separate atheism-homosexual agenda-sexuality from the church.  "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you."  (2Corinthians 6:17)  To immolate the serpent, to prove you are a new creature in Christ it may mean separation from family, old friends, civic and community leaders.  There is a separation from Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims...Episcopalians have chosen to separate from Pentecostals...Catholics from Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. 

Most people have headaches and yet the brain itself, filling most of the head has very little sensation to pain.  You could do surgery on the brain without anesthesia.  Yet, so much money spent on over the counter analgesics-aspirin-BC-ibuprofen.  There are headaches so torturous that they are called suicide headaches, often, the only relief for a suicide headache, just beating your head on a brick wall.  Yet, God can heal all pain...every headache.

There is a wonderful older black woman who delivers Meals on Wheels...brings my meal to me.  She works in a restaurant at night but, for years, has done this mission in the morning.  We love one another, she said to me recently, "Doctor, one morning I was hurting so bad I thought I would die and I said to God, don't you think it is time for me to stop this.  I drove up to the house of a poor black woman; she was sitting on her porch waiting for her food, so hungry.  More important, she wanted a visitor.  Right away, she started eating her food, so hungry and at the same time so anxious to talk with me.  When I went back to my car, God whispered to me 'Now you know why you should continue' and I noticed, I had no more pain."  A great spine surgeon, told me recently, if a patient wants to get rid of back pain, my first advice before talking about any cutting, forgiveness.  He said, "Once you forgive you lose most of your back pain." 

#1890 Cream, Skim Milk, and Clabber

#1890

Cream, Skim Milk, and Clabber

"Mother Teresa's Anyway Poem"

     People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
     Forgive them anyway.

     If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
     Be kind anyway.

     If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
     Succeed anyway.

     If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
     Be honest and frank anyway.

     What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
     Build anyway.

     If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
     Be happy anyway.

     The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
     Do good anyway.

     Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
     Give the world the best you've got anyway.

     You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
     It was never between you and them anyway.

Take the mask off the Lone Ranger, the cape off Superman, and you have two men who are just do-gooders.  Take the habit off the Catholic nun-Roman collar off the priest and you have just two religious workers.  Take the scrubs, white coats off the doctors, uniforms-black robes off law enforcement and with all these good people you have just those "supposedly" interested in your welfare and justice.  That old Greek intellectual Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." 

Things and individuals are not always as they appear.  Mental health is America's greatest need and greater curiosity.  There are some things we cannot let go...a rotten world...a great need for alfresco (fresh air).  The greatest legacy of Bombing Obama is (believe it or not, a Nobel Peace Prize winner) death and destruction. 

I do not want to spook anyone but the terrorism threat is more dangerous than a nuclear threat. 

Differences have a divine purpose.  Would it not be a dreary-boring world if we were all the same?  Chosen by God for life, before the foundation of the world, cancelled chambers of eternity, he planned our beginning as well as our ending.  Would it have not been more fair-just if the "playing field", our lifespans had been more equal?  If every Homo sapiens animal (mankind, God's chief creation) had the same skin color, the same DNA, the same physical characteristics...good-looking, healthy body, beautiful hair, the same wiring of the brain-mental ability.  Why is it, please tell me, that there are so few at the top, as cream (even some crème de crème), as many as just skim milk, and that unfortunate number who are just clabber (sour-spoiled-rotten at the bottom of everything)?

Oh the beauty of it all...the fragrance of differences...the monotony of having to deal with these differences.  As an example, in these times of crucial elections, politicians and even the so called intelligentsia are persuading everyone to vote.  THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE WHO SHOULD NEVER VOTE, DO NOT HAVE THE INTELLIGENCE TO VOTE.  HAVE PROVEN THAT THEY CANNOT THINK FOR THEMSELVES, CERTAINLY CANNOT THINK FOR ME.  Think about it, your writer is a totally bind, 100% disabled military veteran, a field grade Army officer, a medical officer with two earned doctorates.  I have never known anything but hard work and study.  I believe with every cell of my body that I had a purpose on this earth.  I cringe at some of my fellow citizens, who obviously never took a responsible breath...did not care about school-opportunities-excelling in anything.  Many wind up in prison.  Many become a slave to an addiction of some type.  YET, these individuals-citizens of the world's greatest country have the same vote as I have.  The onlookers of my country's vote counts just as much as the vote of one who has achieved.  Perhaps, this is the reason there is so much money in politics. The only way the successful businessman-scientist-entrepreneur can show weight on the side of his beliefs, since his vote does not count for very much is by using the influence of money. 

Joseph Kennedy, father of a president (JFK), said, "There are three rules to succeed in politics.  The first rule is money, the second money, the third more money."  Joseph Kennedy was such a philanderer that Eleanor Roosevelt, widow of a president, refused to sit on the stage with him at JFK's inauguration.  Here in the South, since I can remember, there have always been those two-bit political operators, who paid for votes with their "walking around money".  The Democrat party controlled North Carolina politics for 140 years, the winner of the Democrat primary was the winner.  Republicans-independents-others had no say in government or anything else.  YOU DID NOT TEACH SCHOOL, WORK ON A HIGHWAY, TEACH IN A TAX SUPPORTED COLLEGE UNLESS DEMOCRAT AND GIVING TO THE DEMOCRAT PARTY. 

Oh the beauty of differences, the imagination of the human mind.  We are not stuck where we start.  History marked by the greatness of those expected to remain small.

As the eye doctor at a large Army hospital, every morning, warriors and others (FBI-CIA-Civil servants), lined up for physicals, I had to study for evaluations the insides of all their eyes...like fingerprints, voices, every citizen of God's earth, DIFFERENT eyes. 

One of the most heart wrenching calls I ever heard to a radio talk show, an old, black woman, bed ridden calling in asking for help.  Living alone, she was destitute.  In reply to her pleas, one smart listener replied that she should pray.  I will never forget that woman's answer...she worn with the scars of segregation-hard work-hard times, "The only God I have ever known was a white man's god." 

God's greatest message to a weak and dying world, with all it's problems, And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you (Eph 4:32).  This simple message goes to that small number who are the cream, that larger number who are skimmed from everything, and certainly to those who missed out in life's lottery.  

#1889 Tabloid Fodder

#1889

Tabloid Fodder

(Christian church aflame in Mosul)

"Sweet Dream" by Eurythmics

     I travel the world
     And the seven seas,
     Everybody's looking for something.

     Some of them want to use you
     Some of them want to get used by you
     Some of them want to abuse you
     Some of them want to be abused.

Who can predict the future on this Earth, much less understand it.  I get so tired of hearing people say, "Just move on."  When faced with any problem-terrible calamity, we are not interested in finding a solution, just moving away from the problem.  Most of us just move in circles.  It is the experience of this "seasoned" citizen that the greatest characteristic of human behavior, one's fight to keep his identity.  We are all more than one dimensional, capable of accomplishments beyond our comprehension.  BUT, I have found that there is a change in mental attitude about every twenty years:  At age 20, we are engorged with optimism.  By age 40, our entire "raison de'etre" (reason for being) is personal ambition.  At age 60, buffed and buffeted by the "stones and arrows of this world" we have become cynical.  By age 80, we approach our "sunset" with resignation. 

When the god's were handing out genes, there was much inequity.  Left in the cornfield, after harvest of the ears of grain, dead stalks and leaves, which we call, fodder...many of us feel like fodder...we were not blessed with the genes of ancestral DNA, good looks, sharp minds, the gravitas of charisma. 

Thoughts become a training ground; all babies were cuddly and beautiful...great expectations for their lives.  All do not turn out that way, measured, more or less, as fodder.  With all the opportunities afforded by America, we have more men in prison than any other country, and there are many female convicts.  Noone plans for imperfections...we all think we are going to get there.  The fashion magazines, show every woman as trim-vivacious, a real knockout.  It took Lane Bryant's store and catalogs to inform us that there are still some fat girls. 

This world traveler has witnessed the corruption and low standards of many nations, the way their people suffer because of evil, self-centered leaders.  But, in those nations where they can vote and in America where we should vote, we still have our ideals of integrity in government.  We have reached a place that we really don't expect it anymore, it's like having your life wrapped up in a pet, knowing the short lifespan of a pet. 

Most parents I know have dreams for their children and are willing to make the sacrifices.  If you want to see real sacrifice-dreams-devotion, look at those parents who have children who are disabled-retarded-etc.  These children need love too, perhaps more love than any others.  Most of the time these children, who many will consider fodder; will not bring you the fulfillment you desire (college degrees-grandchildren-independence).  This world traveler is thinking much these days about Mosul in Iraq the ancient city of Nineveh where Jonah preached.  It is the scene of the oldest Christian inhabitance on Earth.  Now, with the onslaught of ISIS, old Christians in nursing homes are being killed (beheaded) because they cannot run from the enemy like young Christians, they are real victims. 

The greatest legacy of "Bombing Obama" is total chaos in the Middle East.  In spite of Muslim tyranny, Saddam Hussein kept a lid on all radical zeal...even one of his ministers, a Christian, Tariq Aziz.  The bludgeoning eye doctor, Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, kept a lid on the Christian "holy lands" of Syria.  Most people do not know that Damascus, the oldest Christian city, is just 150 miles from Jerusalem.  Muslim religious zealots, the three factions, Shi'a, Sunni, and the Kurds, so little love for one another, as was the case with the Iraq/Iran war of 1989.  Just kill one another like useless fodder. 

Who are Americans to judge?  I was at that concert in Birmingham, Alabama, when Klu Kluxers tried to attack that marvelous black singer, Nat King Cole.  Famous Democrat, Police Chief, Bull O'Connor, said, speaking of Birmingham, "I will keep this city segregated or die trying."  This 86 year old writer still remembers the excitement when some saw a black female driving a car for the first time, "Who does she think she is?" 

Oh the insanity of not caring, the elitist regarding their underlings as fodder.  Do you know that there is more money spent on baldness research than finding the cure for malaria?  I have spent my life preaching about the folly of hospitals...patients sick enough to be in a hospital and hospitals allowing visitors who bring in germs...even worse, hospitals with draperies-overstuffed chairs-carpets every bacteria known to man harboring-arming ready to attack a helpless person. 

If you were chosen for life by God, you're one of a kind.  Of the billions who have lived on this Earth (about 7 billion today) no other person has your fingerprints-the iridial flecks of your eyes-your voice like snowflakes or sands on the seashore you are one of a kind...beautiful in your own identity.  

#1888 Eye Candy

#1888

Eye Candy

 A photo of the Red Porphyry Disk by Linda C. McCabe from Legends of Medieval France and Italy.

"My "chief aversion" is the system of greed, private profit, privilege, and violence which makes up the control of the world today, and which has brought it the tragic crisis of unprecedented hunger and unemployment. I am opposed to the new deal [sic] because it strives to strengthen and prolong production for private profit. At bottom I am for conserving the full powers of every person on earth by expanding them to their individual limits. Therefore, I am for socialism, disarmament, and ultimately for abolishing the State itself as an instrument of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. It sums up into one single purpose -- the abolition of the system dog-eat-dog under which we live, and the substitution by the most effective non-violence possible of a system of cooperative ownership and use of all wealth."  - Roger Baldwin, ACLU

When God forgives, he forgets.  The internet neither forgives nor forgets.  In my many excursions to St. Peters Basilica in Rome, even passing through a holy door, I was aware of the porphyryc disc where past kings such as Charlemagne were crowned.  Now, any poor peasant, such as your writer, can traverse this area.  Why not, as a believer in Jesus Christ, a child of God, we are joint heirs with Christ and inheritors of everything that God has provided for his children.  I can still hear those farm people of Eastern North Carolina, many of whom had never worn a piece of gold (wedding band-wrist watch) sing that old hymn "I am the Child of a King". 

During WWII, before radar, powerful search lights penetrated the skies attempting to locate bombing airplanes.  Search lights would often be used at county fairs as advertising to attract attention.  In the bottomless ocean of technology, wireless everything, there is no longer need for search lights.  Mankind has always owned a remarkable ability to hide things...family members-employees-government forums.  In the circle of mental involvement there is great reluctance to reveal many things to one another, hard for husbands and wives to share inner thoughts, difficult for children to confess.  Have you ever noticed how married couples "bark" at one another?  Constantly correct one another?  I can always tell if a male caller to a radio talk show is married, most married men have been corrected so many times by a wife that they are afraid to say anything original.  The greatest writers-orators-preachers are not married; they have learned to escape the criticism-berating of a wife.  A married couple I had not been around for a long time was in my house recently, nothing had changed they were still barking-correcting at one another.  Much of it has to do with eye candy, one having more education-ancestry-financial independence than the other.  My very first memory of my paternal grandparents, a horrible quarrel between them about who was going to pay my aunt's (their daughter's) college tuition.  Both had their own properties, their own bank accounts.  It was far different with my maternal grandparents, as well as my own parents.  My maternal grandmother, as well as my own mother, had learned to submit to the male of the household.  There is nothing wrong with submission, Jesus submitted to his father.  I am sure Jesus submitted to his earthly parents, Mary and Joseph.  Commoners have always submitted to kings.  Soldiers of lower ranks have always submitted to officers and students have always submitted to teachers.  It is the eye candy of realizing the end result.  Everyone cannot be a chief, there must be indians.  The mural of history study, learning the patience of God in dealing with humanity...God saw that everything he created was good.  (Genesis 1:31)  There were thorns on rose bushes, gnats and flies as well as beautiful puppies and singing birds.  We learn to accept the flaws-warts-imperfections of our world.  Most of us can remember certain tragedies: the attack on Pearl Harbor, the attack on 9/11, JFK and MLK assassinations.  But, thank God, we have the eye candy of wonderful personal days, graduation from college, marriage, birth of a child.  Many do not look at it this way because the loss and sadness involved, but the death of a saint of God is cause for celebration, graduation from the thorns-troubles of this world into the splendor of eternal bliss.

Most of us have images sutured into our brain system forever, escape from an automobile collision, recovery from a dread disease, snatched from drowning in a pool or pond.  People who appear normal, willing to exchange the testing on this wicked earth...rather choosing to spend eternity in hell.  In my own house, knowing that I trusted them, young people who would risk hell for a two dollar lottery ticket or even walk out of my house carrying the chest containing my mothers 1847 Rogers silver plate..silver which she left to me and of which she was so proud.  I have said to every young person, particularly local college students, who have worked for me, "I trust you in my house, do you value that trust?  It is so easy to rob a blind man but all this eye candy you see around, nice things I have hauled back from all over the world, so enticing...so easily converted to cash, is really just "junk" compared to your immortal soul."  Of course, the trouble with millennials, today's fat-sassy-spoiled young people, they don't believe they have a soul.  Their entire energy involving living, "more free stuff"...more eye candy.  Have you noticed that every time there is a bazaar killing, the interviewed neighbors will always say, "Such a nice person."  We have all learned to be eye candy.  I have never known a conman (convicted) I did not like and the problem, will not accept help.  One of my employees, financial distress, I was attempting to find him work, he went to my friend's house to cut the grass (a bank vice president) and stole the power tools from his outside shed.  This young man had served in Afghanistan...a blind veteran attempting to help a veteran with sight.  The eye candy of power tools which he could sell, the temptation was just too great.  All images branded-burned into the brain are not eye candy.  I have written about the barefoot refugee children on icy roads on the border of Pakistan. 

An image I cannot get out of my mind, allowing me to know the poverty of "kin folks".  Me with my father at the bedside of an aunt near death, she was my grandfather's sister, hard life-hard work raising children and grandchildren...pain of a miserable death.  I must have been about 3 or 4 years of age, he wanted Aunt Eda to see me for the last time.  She was near death in the house of a son, bleak room, almost nonexistent mattress on the bed, slop-jar under the bed.  Today's deaths in families are so sanitized, there was nothing sanitized here, she and my father talked about her home-going, just a few hours away. 

Men who sit in chairs all day, who exercise their legs on the golf course and their arms at happy hour...have not realized, yet, that the creator of the world and everything in it still has the power to bring their attention to bomb shelters, underground tunnels, MREs (meals ready to eat).  We learn everyday about the incompetence-ineptness of the FBI-CIA and every other facet of government. 

What will you say, when your grandchild, and what will I say when my great granddaughter says, "What did you do when you saw our country was dying?"  "What did you do when you saw the socialistic-communistic-atheistic takeover of my country?"

'"What did you do when you had a chance to elect decent leaders of integrity instead of criminals?"  "What did you do when there was still a chance for a president to appoint honest Supreme Court Justices?" 

As long as I have been in this world, 86 years, I have heard that "ignorance is bliss".  I believe that bliss is for the abnormal.  I find that the only happy people around me are those on welfare...those who have nothing and want nothing.  Those who do not want to take a risk or accept responsibility. 

I have been to Burma twice, a Buddhist nation, where early Christians missionaries, such as Carey were tortured.  Travelling alone, object of much interest, I could always find someone to talk with at the hotel bar...as I drank my soda water.  A hotel bartender in Rangoon would not take his eyes off me, stop talking with me.  He said, "You are the first Christian I have ever talked with.  I have a vision in my brain, a gold cross, when I was very young, a great flood, my parents had me on the housetop, just before we all went under the water a washtub came by.  My mother put me in the washtub before they died.  Somewhere in the long flood experience a bird landed on me and laid an egg.  I was old enough to have seen my mother cook eggs, some way; I broke the shell and ate the inside of the egg.  Later, I was rescued from that tub, raised in a home as a Buddhist.  I still think that there is a reason for the image of the cross."  I said, "Your parents were Christians and they had put the image of the gold cross in your house in your mind."  My room was close by and I always carried in my suitcase a New Testament, he could speak and read English, I gave him the Bible.  Don't tell me that he was not fulfilled, by what God with my help, eye candy, left to him. 

#1886 Green Zebras

#1886

Green Zebra

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were.  But without it we go nowhere."  - Carl Sagan

John Grisham, America's favorite storyteller (if this writer could only write like this man, a man who has made millions writing).  Once said, it is much easier to write books than to sell books.  This sightless, old veteran always loved books, now loves to read books on tape.  Of course, for any book to be a best seller, it must be a worst smeller.  But, most people with any age and maturity at all, know that this world is not a perfect place, and in reading books, as in listening to conversations, you must learn to filter out the drab-ugly-obscene.  I love legal thrillers.  This writer, a doctor, would have loved to study law but, as Gandhi said about Christians, I have known too many lawyers.  Only one other profession enjoys a lower esteem in my thinking than lawyers...psychologists.  One lawyer sent a husband seeking a divorce to one of his lawyer friends, in a note to his lawyer friend, he said, "The wife is my victim; I will let you skin the husband.  Together, we will take what little money they have left." 

In the courtroom scenes, smart lawyers will always say something for the jury's benefit, which will be objected to by opposing counsel; the judge will admonish the lawyer who made the statement.  The judge will instruct the jury to "disregard" what the lawyer has said.  Of course, the jury will remember that, if nothing else.

I have one sister; she is so like my mother that it is amazing.  My sister, like my mother, will always say, "You did not hear that from me, you must not tell anyone."  They both knew full well that it would not be forgotten and you would surely tell others.  Even Jesus, in his miracles, would often say don't tell anyone.  After Jesus cured a man of leprosy, "And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them."  (Mark 1:43)  Jesus knew human nature, if I were cured from a dread disease, I would be shouting it.  The man who had laid by "gate beautiful" at the temple, for forty years, crippled from birth, begging, asked Peter and John for money...Peter said, "Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk."  (Acts 3)  When he was healed by Peter, he was leaping around, not letting these two great men get out of his sight.  

I believe in divine healing as much as I believe in anything but, it is God's business.  If he does not heal me here, I know he will heal me there.  I once upset a Catholic priest in South America, we were staying in a hotel near a Catholic shrine, he wanted me to go down and bathe my eyes in the water of the shrine.  I know that thousands go to Lourdes and other such places every year.  I said, "Father, I have more faith than you, if God wants me healed from my blindness, he can do it any place-anytime." 

When lawyers, speak of disregarding lawyer's statements, it is called green zebras.  They know a person would never forget a green zebra.  There are things which, we, human beings, never forget and, same way; there are things which we want others to remember.  Rumors will always multiply by the minute. 

We live in a world of making good first impressions...green zebras.  We patronize doctors-lawyers-friends who have fancy homes or offices because it makes us feel better-look good.  Many of my acquaintances, lease automobiles, pay huge house mortgages to impress.  One of my friends owned a large exclusive department store (Weil's, Goldsboro, NC) he told me that so many of the town's upper class women would come in his store and "buy" an expensive dress, wear it to one party, where she could impress her friends, then put the sales tickets back on it and then return the dress to the store.  Occasionally there would be some crumbs or something else showing she had worn it, we could not say anything because, then she would be mad and stop really "buying" anything from us.  In my own business, someone will buy an expensive print, after they receive it, make copies of it, then return it to me having found some type blemish...reason for buyer's remorse or refusal and of course, eBay refunds their money, no questions asked. 

This country boy will have to admit that he was so ignorant going off to the university.  He believed in the sanity and sanctity of the human mind.  How quickly he found that sinners act like sinners, that liberalism is a mental disease...liberals, people who always see green zebras...sublime hypocrites.  My first experience with these elitist from rich homes-prep schools-crocodile tears for the disenfranchised...back in the dorm, drunk on Saturday night, fighting with the fire extinguishers, such a mess all over the halls for the black janitors to clean up.  The liberals, the social climbers, the country club crowd, all so interested in impressing one another...focusing on green zebras, the tragedy, living a life of deception and perception, NEVER REALITY...even at the church house, never recognizing the sovereignty of God.  God is permitted in their mind if God is willing to follow them, not them follow God. 

A mystery to some, particularly the unsaved, the more religion is persecuted, the faster it grows.  I was at a place in China, where three men called me over, one said, "Are you a Christian?"  They told me they were Christian; we recognized one another, the Christian church, so persecuted in Communist China, NOW, today, more Christians in China under persecution than the population of the United States.  In 1917, atheism became the religion of Russia.  Karl Marx had predicted that religion and capitalism should be built together so that both could fall together, religion the super structure of capitalism.  By 1954, Russia had discovered that the more you persecute religion the faster it grows.  This writer visited great cathedrals in Russia that had been turned into museums (Saint Isaacs, St Basil, Peter, and Paul).  Godless atheists did not stomp out Christianity, did not stomp out capitalism.  Churches-businesses are already thriving in Russia.  On my trips to Communist China, I saw more and more revival there each trip. 

When you lie to Congress, you lie to the American people.  When will Congress learn that there are green zebras of deceit, pushed by liberal-communist of our nation, such as the "patrons" of Planned Parenthood?  When will America discover that those great biblical phrases on great buildings in Washington really do mean something...even at the Supreme Court?  The news media, democrats, and university elitist have surrendered to Satan and are heading to Hell with him.  We must point to certain non-negotiable green zebras on which we will not fail or flinch, abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, cloning, and the destruction of the home via same sex marriage, these are non-negotiable, we will not surrender.  

#1887 Words That Really Mean Something

#1887

Words That Mean Something

The Patience of God

John MacDuff, upliftingPlay Audio! Download Audio
(John Angell James, "Happiness")
"Many are saying: Who can show us any good?" Psalm 4:6
There is certainly some pleasure in the gratification of the appetites--in the enjoyment of health, friends, property, and fame. Even sinful objects have their pleasures! There could be no power in temptation--if sin yielded no enjoyment.
  needs which they cannot supply;
  cravings which they cannot satisfy;
  woes which they cannot alleviate; 
  anxieties which they cannot dispel. 
For each one who is even tolerably successful in gaining felicity from visible objects--there are many who utterly fail. Their schemes are frustrated; their hopes perish; their air castles vanish as they journey on in life--and each ends a course of worldly-mindedness, by adding another to the millions of examples which had proved this present world to be vanity. 
In some cases, abundance and unobstructed enjoyment produce boredom. Tired of old pleasures, they look about for new ones, and plead the oft-repeated inquiry, "Who will show us anything good?" Novelty perhaps comes to the relief of their discontented, restless, and dissatisfied minds; but novelty itself soon grows old, and still something new is wanted. There remains an aching void within--a craving, hungry appetite for bliss--unsatisfied, unfed. They hunt for enjoyment . . .
  in endless parties of pleasure,
  in every place of amusement,
  in every scene of diversion;
  in the dance--and in the game;
  in the theater--and in the concert;
  and in the changes of foreign travel.
But happiness, like a shadow ever flitting before them, and ever eluding their grasp, tantalizes them with its form, without yielding them its substance; and excites their hopes--only to disappoint them!
What are all the pleasures of time and sense, all the objects of this visible world--but as the dropping of pebbles into a deep chasm, which, instead of filling it up, only tell him how deep it is--by awakening the dismal echoes of emptiness and desolation?
Look at the worldling. Does he succeed in his quest for happiness? Is he satisfied? Let him possess all he seeks, all he wishes, all that earth can furnish. Let rank be added to wealth, and fame to both; let a constant round of fashionable amusements, festive scenes, and elegant parties, follow in endless succession, until his cup is full to overflowing. What does it all amount to? "All that my eyes desired, I did not deny them. I did not refuse myself any pleasure. When I considered all that I had accomplished and what I had labored to achieve--I found everything to be vanity and a pursuit of the wind! There was nothing to be gained under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 2)
Have not multitudes since Solomon's time, made the same melancholy confession? Is it not a general admission, that the pleasure of worldly objects arises more from hope and anticipation--rather than possession? They are likebeautiful bubbles, which, as they float, reflect the colors of the rainbow--but dissolve and vanish when grasped! Tell me, votaries of earthly good--have you realized what you expected? Are not the scenes of festivity and amusement resorted to, by many with aching hearts? Does not the smiling countenance often conceal a troubled heart? Is not the laugh resorted to--in order to suppress the sigh?

Even if it were granted, that the possession of wealth, the gratifications of taste, and the indulgence of appetite, could give happiness in seasons of health and prosperity--they must inevitably fail in the day of sickness and adversity. If they were satisfying for a season--they are all fragile and uncertain! All the enjoyments of this life are like gathered flowers, which are no sooner plucked than they begin to lose their beauty and their fragrance while we look at them and smell them; and which, however mirthful and beautiful they appeared while they were growing--begin to wither as soon as they are in our hands!
Even if it were granted, that the possession of wealth, the gratifications of taste, and the indulgence of appetite, could give happiness in seasons of health and prosperity--they must inevitably fail in the day of sickness and adversity. If they were satisfying for a season--they are all fragile and uncertain! All the enjoyments of this life are like gathered flowers, which are no sooner plucked than they begin to lose their beauty and their fragrance while we look at them and smell them; and which, however mirthful and beautiful they appeared while they were growing--begin to wither as soon as they are in our hands!

Beautiful bubbles!

But viewing man as a rational, moral, and immortal creature; as a sinner subject to the stings of a reproachful conscience, and under the displeasure of the God he has offended; as liable to all the vicissitudes of a tearful existence, and ever exposed to the fear and stroke of death--he needs something more for his happiness than can be found in the objects of this world. He has . . .

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For further reading: J.R. Miller's insightful article, "While We May".

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Feel free to forward these gems to others who may be encouraged or profited by them!

Addition, Dr. Morris:

This is perhaps one of the greatest sermons I have ever heard...and I have heard some great sermons, great preachers.  I said to a preacher friend, not long ago, "I can just envision Pilate and those other persecutors abusing our precious lord.  IF, God in his omnipotence had just walked a tree across the entire scene...almost daily, I am perplexed that God allows sin and sinners to succeed.  After all, we were not in those millions who were led by a pillar of fire by night, who witnessed the parting of the Red Sea or the Jordan River.  We were not there when Jesus performed his miracles, feeding thousands with a small boy's lunch.  I just have to believe-trust that we achieve through faith what we could never learn by sight.  Perhaps, the greatest miracle, that God expects us to continue our faith and belief in him in spite of the world-flesh-devil.  

#1885 Shadow Boxing with Illusions

#1885

Shadow Boxing with Illusions

"Great is Thy Faithfulness" - Hymn

     Great is Thy faithfulness,” O God my Father,
     There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
     Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
     As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

It is much easier to clean up language than a sinful heart.  Facts are testy things.  Language which I hear everyday in the news, in polite conversation was never heard when I was a boy. 

Most of us just shadow box with illusions, we want to think that things are better than they are.  Anyone not Jewish-Muslim-Atheist or one of the world's minor religious groups will usually say that they are Christian.  Do you have any idea what you mean when you say, Christ-like?  One definition of Christian, the way you behave in a large city at MIDNIGHT, where nobody knows you, is the same behavior you have at MIDDAY in your hometown where everyone knows you.  We live in a desensitized world of illusions.  That talking box, your television set, has desensitized you to everything in your lifestyle.  Satan always pays off in counterfeit-compromise.  If you have morals, you feel very lonely even in a crowd, lonely in a room full of people, sometimes, even among family.  You find yourself really up against it, using discretion, a word mostly without meaning.  How do you internet-fraternize, hobnobbing among rich, white trash?

There are times I feel like Mark Twain when around "worldly" people...perhaps that ark with Noah and his crowd should have sunk.  I can well understand why God, after they got onto land and began to multiply and build the Tower of Babel, just gave them some type of brain transplant so they were all speaking different languages.  Some have evidently survived all these centuries because I still cannot understand their languages on the streets-in places of business-in bureaucratic offices-the neighborhood-even some pretenders at the church house.  This writer is sightless, but do you hear the same pretentions I hear? 

For those among us, who missed the boat or whose boat has never come in, they have the illusion that everything should be fair.  It certainly is not fair that some among us should be rich and famous, that some among us should be so handsome or pretty, that some among us should be so smart.  It certainly is not fair that a man should not be able to marry another man if they love each other.  It certainly is not fair that a woman should not be able to marry another woman because she is masculine and the other woman is feminine.  It certainly is not fair for women not to share a foxhole on the frontlines in war with a man.  It certainly is not fair that boys and girls should not be able to use the same shower-same locker room.  It certainly is not fair that a mother can get rid of a baby if the baby is not perfect...according to some sociologist, even a few weeks after birth.  Besides, who wants an ugly baby anyway-certainly not one that is redheaded, deformed, or retarded.

Before a house falls, there are always signs of termites, cracks in the walls, or sink holes.  Before a civilization falls, like Roman-Greek-Egyptian there are always signs of decline or slow death.  Every individual heading for the chasm of self destruction...alcoholism-addictions-crime saw many road signs on his way down.

We know what has happened to most universities, no longer education institutions but centers for liberal-atheist indoctrination.  Because of government largesse and the wringing of more and more tax dollars from a docile public, most universities and colleges have become a hotbed of Godless communism...after all, all a large school needs is a winning ball team.

When this poor country boy was at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, I felt so privileged just to be there.  At very low pay, I worked my way through school.  Perhaps there was a gay-socialistic-atheistic agenda there, even then, but I was not aware.  Just as a soldier, I was willing to risk everything for the privilege of study or defending.  My life was based on facts not feelings: that others might not be honest and genuine did not give me any excuse for not being a man of integrity. 

I say this without fear of contradiction, I know, I have studied the problem, even at so called ivy league schools, the "hasp" for notoriety huge funds for the athletic program, unprepared students, especially minorities wooed and cooed, great money spent for brawn not brain on the sports field.  Most of these "lettermen" do not even attend classes, have someone else to do their work, graduate as ignorant or worse than before they entered.  Scoreboard headlines are more important than skylines.  Higher education matriculation has always been rotten, an illusion.  When I was a student at UNC-CH, not so in grad school where smarts count, at university expense "nannies" checked on prize athletes, prize sons of legislators-judges-business leader alumni to make sure these sons of the elite did not have any troubles financial or otherwise.  The poor peons for whom the university was granted a charter, to educate the masses, were on their own. 

The trouble most people have with temptation, they never want to resist it completely.  The writer Oscar Wilde, a famous-gay-addictive-soiled personality said, "I can resist anything except temptation."  On the outskirts of eternity, you may have time to think about the temptations you should have resisted. 

Life is real, not an illusion.  Made in the image of God, realness means responsibility.  I am responsible to do the best I can with what I have.  There is nothing in the Bible that speaks of socialism.  When our Blessed Lord's feet massaged the sands around the Sea of Galilee (he never owned any method of conveyance, never ventured fifty miles from where he was born) most of the civilized world was enslaved.  We are told that different people were given different talents; we are told that there were blind people, sick people.  God showed us how easy it is to feed a large crowd (one lunch that a loving mother had prepared for a small boy).  God could have furnished a fiery chariot to deliver every one of the three million Jewish slaves from Egypt to the Promised Land if he had so desired. 

It has passed so quickly, all my  life I have known sorrow and loss...perhaps nothing like the loss of eyesight.  The eyes are truly the windows of the soul, but what would I have changed?  My soul has a certainty not an illusion of the eternal.    

#1884 Jezebel Clinton

#1884

Jezebel Clinton

     

   

http://bloviatingzeppelin.net/

"Look the average Democrat voter is just plain stupid.  They are easy to manipulate.  That's the easy part."  - Hillary Clinton as told to Dick Morris in "Rewriting History" 2005

This writer, unlike many of his family members, friends, associates has never been ashamed of talking about his humble beginnings...raised like a peasant in the poverty of an Eastern North Carolina tobacco farm, dirt road, no power, phone, or water lines.  Yet, my ancestry were landowners, can one even imagine the destitution of the tenant farmers and racial minorities of that time in our history?  But, we are not stuck where we start.

As peasants, cash crops, cotton and tobacco, my parents would carefully prepare the tobacco leaves for market...taking the tobacco to a warehouse where it was auctioned.

I well remember, on our trek to the tobacco auction market, we would pass the large country club with its great green golf courses.  The men would be walking around in strange outfits.  My father would say, "They are different than us, very rich men in town."  He never told us that the brother (well known lawyer) of his own grandfather (a well known preacher) founded the country club.  My parents were intent on making sure that their children knew the work and solace of hands.  In this writer's "claims" to intelligence, nothing has amazed me more...even in studying intricate hands in Gray's Anatomy the musculature neurology of the hands.  Can one even attempt to describe the intricacies involved-hand eye coordination when using the hands with musical instruments (playing the piano), surgery, giving comfort to anyone?  Do you still remember the touch of your mother's hands on your forehead when she was determining your fever?

Shakespeare talked about the hands in his play Macbeth , (2.2.61) Lady Macbeth who had participated in the murder of a king.  She continued to wash her hands day after day she said, "Will all the water in the ocean wash this blood from my hands?"

In 1938, the great movie Jezebel starring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda, is it not amazing that most great movies result from epics in the Bible?  Is it not amazing that the creator of the world and everything in it wrote a book?  Is it not amazing that recorded in that book, a scene showing the despicable-evil, political wife of King Ahab, Jezebel, on the orders of the prophet Elijah being thrown from a balcony and killed?  The scripture tells us that the dogs ate all of her body except her hands.  (2 Kings 9:30-37).  In the movie, Jezebel states that she has evil hands.

This writer has traveled every continent of the world, shaking and touching the hands of many people, I can tell so much by a person just by their handshake.  To a working man, I always say, "I love to shake the hands of a man who works."  When I look a woman's hands, some manicured, some rough from a life of work, some with polished nails, some with clawing nails, it is easy to determine women who have spent their time at the card table or at the cooking-work table...some hands spent moving lappers-looms...hands of men that fitted a shovel or hammer more than a golf club.  In all the beauty of the world, there is nothing more beautiful than the hands of a small child, no matter what sex, color, or social advantage.  I have written about this before, one of the most horrific images in my brain, my experience in an Army hospital operating room, witnessing an abortion, those little hands being taken from the body of the mother. 

Your writer, since childhood, was a voyeur of America's political system.  I well remember all of our presidents, since FDR.  As poor as we were, my father always subscribed to the newspaper and this small child, read every page.  I read Eleanor Roosevelt's column, "My Day".  I so remember Harry Truman, when he told his audience that Thomas E. Dewey spoke from both sides of his mouth.  There have been some awful "clods" elected as president; no worse example of a man's "decadence" than Lyndon Johnson, no more ill prepared for such an office as the peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, or the womanizer, Bill Clinton.  This nation will never recover from the indecencies of its first mulatto president, Barack Obama.  I was sitting across a luncheon table from the president of a Christian college, much to my shock; he told me that he voted for Obama...that he thought such a young, intelligent man would be a good change.  I did not think this man would be elected the first time, much less the second time.  I could not believe that black people could support such obvious ineptness and lack of concern not only for his own race but for the welfare of the world.  It is beyond comprehension that anyone with normal intelligence cannot see the self serving addiction of this man and his wife.  He has doubled the national debt, made the world a hodgepodge of terrorism.  He has made life even worse for his own race.  Only one word aptly describes this man, the personification of hypocrisy or a destroyer.

Now, and I truly believe this is a matter of his own public display, I believe his personal feelings are very different (I think he actually despises the Clintons), he pushes the presidential candidacy of another evil woman, Hillary Clinton.

I was in Argentina during the reign of the Perons, I still remember the huge building where evil reigned, making life for those people miserable.  My guide told me that the Perons were sending most of the wealth of Argentina into storage for themselves.  Argentina has never recovered from the rule of Juan and Eva Peron.  

Books have been written about the character of Hillary Clinton...her struggle for power, her foul mouth, and her willingness to indulge and endure anything from a worthless-impeached-womanizing-pervert husband William Clinton.  It is obvious that she will do anything, say anything to obtain a pinnacle of power.  The tragedy, that 50% of the American population is willing and ready to support such tragic treason.  In the book, American Evita by Christopher Anderson, “Fu!c$ off!  It’s enough I have to see you shit-kickers every day!  I’m not going to talk to you, too!  Just do your G#@$amn job and keep your mouth shut.”  (Hillary to her State Trooper bodyguards after one of them greeted her with “Good Morning.”)  Books have been filled with the way this one woman has degraded the people of this nation and, now, she wants to rule us.  When will the American people regain their common sense? 

The Republican Party, which I once supported, has become a spineless blob of jello.  At least, "ruling" Republicans had enough sense to want to keep her from getting into power.  Seventeen ran for the office of president, one man with all his flaws, Donald Trump, succeeded in gaining more Republican primary votes than any other Republican candidate in history.  YOU DO NOT ASK MUCH ABOUT THE RELIGIOUS-EMPIRCAL STATUS OF A PLUMBER WHEN HE COMES TO UNPLUG YOUR TOILET.  "Poor Donald, with all his expertise-money-vibrato must run not just against Hillary and her Godless Democrats but against a Democrat controlled news media AND,  even worse, the fakery and fraud of a pretending republican party.  Most rhino Republicans can get very religious, when it comes to saving their own skins-keeping their own bank funds-prestige but can get very wispy-sissy when it comes to the foxholes necessary for warriors to save their country.  This writer learned to despise the Democrat Party, many years ago, witnessing a 140 year rule of the state of North Carolina.  Their "gospel" led by Josephus Daniels and his paper, their Bible, the Raleigh News and Observer, Democrat control.  This meant, you did not get a job where any tax money was involved unless you were a Democrat...schoolteacher, roadwork, state hospital, or college work.  You could not drive a school bus unless a Democrat.  Just imagine what it was like for a Republican-black-disabled person to get anything from a Democrat official.  Why o' why would black people flock in lockstep to vote for a Democrat?

Jezebel had nothing on Hillary or Eva, these woman were married to weak, gutless men.  There is nothing wrong with a woman in secular power...Golda Meir of Israel, Thatcher of England, the several queens of Holland.  The world needs a woman of integrity, America does not need Hillary.

#1883 Neither Bending or Bowing

#1883

Neither Bending or Bowing

Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.  (Hebrews 13:5)

This writer, doctor, world traveler, a man of warts, sinner saved by grace, knows that God has forgiven him but finds it so hard to forgive himself.  I must learn to look beyond, just as Jesus looked beyond the cruel cross-nails-Roman soldiers.

On one of my trips to the holy land, I was sitting beside the Dead Sea with an elderly couple from London.  We were sitting on some rocks munching on lunch.  The old man, looking at the Dead Sea and then looking up at Herod's Palace-Masada with tears streaming down his face said, "This is the trip of our lifetime."  His wife was a professor of languages, he, a diamond cutter.  He told me that he would often look at a stone for hours, even days before he made his cut.  The right cut of the stone and he would have a fortune precious stones.  The wrong cut and he would have nothing. 

In life, making the right decisions and "all is well"...wrong decision, and your life can be a disaster.  Oh, the importance of the hammer and chisel in learning how some of us "tick".  It is impossible to know another person without walking in their "moccasins or Gucci's" for a few days.  It is impossible to know another person without learning the baggage they carry around.  The mystery of all psychology, history of one man or a nation, why people behave as they do, those of us possessing faith (note possess not profess) act so surprised when sinners act like sinners.  Yet, too many of us run the race to dress-talk-imitate them.  The true test of the born again Christian is not to bend or bow to the insolence of the world.  We are a chosen people-royal priesthood (1Peter 2:9).  I am different from that Jewish couple from London, members of false religions, even the pretenders of my own Christian faith.

In social conversation, are you shocked when your own educated doctor uses curse words-foul language?  When your automobile mechanic uses curse words or foul language?  Why would you be shocked if your presidential candidate uses foul language?  SINNERS ACT LIKE SINNERS...education-money-political power has nothing to do with discourse and, too many God fearing-tax paying-hardworking Christians are indifferent to their fellow church members' mode of dress-language-discourse or decorum.  We just bend or bow and assume the position that "weak spines and lack of guts, wins friends and influences people" (to quote the famous Dale Carnegie).  You are shocked when your pastor-schoolteacher-politician uses bad language.  We feel we have lost chunks of our brain, listening to street talk...creatures from another planet.  This writer has walked the streets of every continent (passport stamped in 157 countries), I could not understand foreign languages, and neither can I understand languages on the streets of my city punctuated by profanity.  Every time I think of the taxes I pay to educate young people, to hear how they talk...much worse, to learn how they walk. 

Your writer matriculated in a small country school, 12 grades in one building, and 13 in my graduating class.  I so remember, our first film projector...a screen in the auditorium and those large reels.  The film would often break and the principal would have to stop and patch things...more amazing than patching a film, that the Creator God of the universe, the one who patched and put everything together, somethingness from nothingness, would actually write a book...THE ANSWER BOOK.  I was raised in a home-community-country where it was easy to "look beyond", know the right path to take.  It was always, "What would Jesus do?"  Look at the book.  Like the old projector film, the grace of God flows...lifestyle-vocations-discipleship-citizenship.  Christianity established the boundary lines-measuring rod for everyone...even unbelievers, atheists and those who judge and measure everyone. 

In human physiology, the fibril of a muscle, when stimulated, either responds 100% or not at all, this is called the all-or-none law.  In crossing a canyon or even a big ditch, it is much better to cross with one big leap than two short ones.  Our objective is heaven, have the wisdom and courage to take the big leap or none at all.  There are "clouds of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1) who had the courage to never bend or bow. 

In sports-business-politics there are always those who will bend and break rules, those who will bow at the alter of popularity.  You warn your brother-son-friend about what they are up against in this world of competition.  It is so easy to get tired of the struggle, to compromise.

I wish I could tell you that I have never compromised.  The owner of a Jewish hotel told me, the struggle he has in serving kosher food to Jewish people who demand kosher according to their Jewish law.  In Jewish law, there are so many rules that must be followed, cutlery, mixing, rabbinical supervision.  It costs thousands of dollars more to present kosher meals.  He knew the compromises that take place in grocery stores and other places, where kosher like organic are just words.  He knows that Jews like all of us, will turn a blind eye, our certifications-licenses-peer review important in professions.  Should we bend and bow to just any article in a publication?  Any certification for a brain surgeon?  Any type of license for an airline pilot?  Should we compromise inspections? 

Care little about consequences?  There was a time when the Nobel Prize was worth something...but then came Carter, Obama, even the murderer Arafat.  We are all fooled with that ridiculous-silly example glass half full/half empty.  There are times not to bend or bow to mediocrity or fraud.  God holds us responsible when we do.  Most of the promises of God, conflicts of the world are viewed by the conscience of mankind.  Most of the world never sees tragedy up close, certainly not the elitist.  They cry "crocodile tears" but will bend and bow to anything that moves them upward.  In a lifetime ago, this field grade Army medical officer, talked with war prisoners who had been tortured, one said that the torture was ten times worse if you screamed or shed tears.  Satan wants the Christian world to bend and bow without screaming or shedding tears for the conditions around us.

#1882 Abstractions and Addictions

#1882

Abstractions and Addictions

"When the solution is simple, God is answering."  - Albert Einstein

If, riches were fishes then no one would go hungry.  If, every human being in the world were the same, biologically-physically-spiritually, then there would be no judging of one another.  If, Satan does not exist, and for two hundred years schools-colleges-media have persuaded people that he does not exist, then there are no absolutes about anything.  If, we prefer to live in a virtual world rather than a real world and we know that many students graduate from high school without being able to read, why put instructions on a drug store prescription?  Why put up a sign "Beware of Dog"?  Is this the reason the uneducated listen to music lyrics that just have a beat?  If, "face value"-first appearance is all important...the car you drive, the clothes your wear, your membership-appearance in certain clubs-groups that make you look good...why would you put dependence in physicians-pastors-politicians?  Even atheists, matters in our universe that even scientists and the most intelligent among us have trouble explaining: therefore God. 

With your abstractions and addictions, find time for solitude and the exercising of your mind.  Only two matters determine your health: the nutrition you put in your body, the toxins you remove from your body, the same applies to your mind.  Early in life, we should learn to enrich our mind, as well as detoxify the mind.  The mind of man is the most intricate creation of God (Einstein) AND, if the intestine-digestive system of man determines health then, can you understand the importance of what you put into your body for digestion in your intestine...just as important, what enters your mind.  We have all seen the results of "Stinking Thinking".  Omnipotent God, creating somethingness from nothingness rested after creating the world and everything in it.  God did not need rest but as in everything else, gave us the example.  All my life, I have pitied hardworking people who could not rest and sleep on a decent mattress.  I witnessed very sick patients suffering on "mats".  In Africa, so called hospitals, patients laying on the floor...their families "camping" outside the hospital so they could care for the patient...cook for the patient...I will never forget all that smoke from cooking campfires. 

Too many of us were just voyeurs of the world.  I am convinced that God wanted me to witness it but I have certainly found that comfortable Americans do not want to hear the stark reality of what I witnessed..."out of sight, out of mind".  Adding to their addictions and abstractions, Americans, and I am ashamed to say my family and friends, those with whom I come in contact, feel that there is an eventual technology that will solve every problem.  Do we really think that the smart phone, the talking box (TV), the computer, horrid chemicals in plastics (the cause of much cancer, chemicals leaching from plastic) have made the world better?

The world's problems are your fault.  The physician-pastor-politician wants you to think that their purpose is to advise you that you are the abuser, the cause of your illness, the cause of your spiritual decline, the cause of your country's defeat.  Most of us are just working as hard as we can tap dancing to the tune that the media and the powerbrokers dictate.  The world is full of magic bullets, voting a certain way, fulfilling obligations to church and community, spending for treatments not cures.  They fed us on the magic bullet of antibiotics and now we discover that these antibiotics just helped create super germs: that 80% of antibiotics used in livestock feed (and livestock use the ground for their bathroom) now pollute our water systems.  Imagine this; some bacteria NOW can live on antibiotics as their only food.  Most illnesses are caused by viruses; antibiotics have no affect on a virus. 

Chemicals in the human body are alive, why would you put dead food-synthetic materials in your body?  It makes more sense to take nothing, for nutrition or for medication, then to take something that is old or rancid.  We have no idea how long many food stuffs have been stored.  In mainland China, food was being grown right up to the cement on highways, there were never any of these acres of grass, that which must be mowed at taxpayers' expense around great highway intersections.  All this land in China is used for the production of live food.  In the USA, sixty one thousand square miles of arable land is covered by parking lots.  Each year, thousands of acres of farm land become cement for great highway intersections.  Even, recent years, a love affair with corn products to make ethanol, to burn in cars, when so much of the world's population is hungry and, with that as with many other sins, we think that God has turned a blind eye.  THE ROAD TO HEALTH IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTESTINES.  Everyday, in my prayers, I ask God to let the millions of hungry children and refugees, barred from their homes by warfare, know that someone is concerned about them.  

I remember so well, the old-fashioned Christmas tree lights, light bulbs in series, if one bulb was defective, all the lights would go out.  One doctor's appointment kills a day, how much better such time could be spent by your reading-studying the aspects of healthy living.  The cancer epidemic came on with the invention of plastic, this old, blind, veteran remembers the first plastic.  The leaching of these chemicals, from plastic (plastic is made of exotic chemical compounds) hot drink cups, plastic wrapped meats, bottles of water have caused the epidemic of cancer-diabetes-senile dementia.  When was the last time your doctor asked you about your food, what you eat, regularity at the bathroom, how much rest you get?  Drugs bring in the money.  The American public wants everything faster and larger...fast food, large buns-steaks-pizzas-drinks.  Digestion and mastication determines the health of your intestines, learn to relax, eat slowly.  The life you save may be your own.