On Dark Days

I made an offering of my blindness to God many years ago, I should have learned to live in a world of blackness after all these years. So desperately, I want to walk by faith not sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), I want my walk to be a path of holiness. Still, there are days I go through absolute depression. Such was this past weekend, I told someone to adjust my AC in my house and some way the AC got cut off and I could not get it back on. So, on one of the hottest days of the year, I suffered, but I was on the beach, breeze, and I had a fan. I well remember the time when there was no air conditioning anywhere. I well remember the time when very few people had a fan. The churches were full of people fanning themselves with hand fans. Stores and homes had large suction fans in the attic, there was no air conditioning in the hospitals. Patients, in pain, sweating, their linens having to be changed many times during the day. At hospitals in Africa, even today, few are air conditioned, families still camp outside the hospital and prepare food and give care for their loved ones in the hospital. We should remember these things before we complain, my mother canning with a pressure cooker on a wood stove, all summer.

Then, on Sunday morning, I get up early, go down stairs, and the first thing I hear is water running. My carpets, everything, covered in water, from a broken pipe in a lower bathroom. This had happened one time previously” flooding, insurance, adjusters, restoration, building codes. I thought, “O lord, I cannot go through this again.” I went outside to turn off the valve that controls water to the entire house, I have a master valve that turns off water to the house when I am not there, just in case something like this were to happen. Water was running from the upper floors like a hurricane. I thought, I must have some help, I called the emergency, the fire and police departments came. Knowing and seeing my dilemma, my disability, the fire captain said, “let me have your phone and the phone book, I will take care of this.” He asked me my plumber, insurance company, restoration people. He made all the necessary calls and in a short time, my house was full of busy people.

On dark days, you need help, on a dark day like this, you feel you are entitled to help because of the taxes you have paid. Many days are dark, not because of disability, not because of catastrophe beyond our control. Not because of anything we may have done, or may not have done. One can have a dark day simply because of the acts of others.

In my early life, taking some time from my practice, I thought a science and physics class at the local high school because the science teacher had died. The school desperately needed someone with that background to teach these classes. There were two boys from the local Odd Fellows Home in one of the classes, I was probably the youngest teacher they knew, and both felt they could talk with me. Both were interested in my military background, my science background, and my Christian testimony. I was almost sorry they told me what they did, because there was nothing I could do about it. Even then, political correctness had taken it's stranglehold over politics, media, etc.

These two boys told me how they were being molested at the orphanage by one of the senior staff males. One of the males on staff at the orphanage was attracted to boys, the other was attracted to girls. They told me that both boys and girls were being molested at this orphanage, they wanted to know what they should do. I went to the local sheriff and told him what I knew. You have already guessed it, he just pooh-poohed the whole thing. He said, “you know these children come from bad backgrounds, they do not know how to behave, and they will lie about anyone who corrects them. They are just lucky to be in a nice place, a nice building with three meals a day. The superintendent and the staff at that orphanage are wonderful people, not one would bother a child.” Most of the 45,000 Catholic priests who war the Roman collar around their neck, are wonderful people, but we know by now that there are always those who insult the church and embarrass the unchurched.

Just three blocks from my house, a retirement home for elderly people, now closed. One of the patients there, a member of my church, she had been a member of my church for 72 years...a very expensive retirement home. On holidays, she would invite me over to eat with them since so many of the patients were away visiting their family on holidays. She did not have family visit, nor did I. There is a very hot place in hell for those who abuse, not only children but the elderly. She told me of money being taken from her purse, her medications being taken, or pills being replaced by aspirin tablets. This went on until she died. The only time I was a patient at the local hospital, the nurse came in and took my money and jewelry and put it in an envelope for safe keeping. I have a talking watch, it talks to me and tells me the time, date, etc. When my envelope was returned, my watch was speaking Spanish and part of my money was gone. So much for the safety, security, sanity of a hospital on which you depend for care and honesty.

If we are normal intelligence, nothing surprises us anymore about anything. With 77 million baby boomers retiring depending on the 15.3% tax taken out of their pay, going into a social security trust fund, believing they will have some support in old age. It is bad to know that there is just one big IOU at the trust fund. All the money they have paid in has been used for other things, until now the US treasury has been able to keep sending out the social security checks, because enough working people are paying social security to pay those who retired. This has all changed this year, now there is more going out than coming in. It takes every dollar paid in taxes to pay social security, medicare and medicaid. All other expenses of government: two wars, veterans administrations, grants to colleges, students, research facilities, all this money is borrowed from China, Japan, Western Europe or somewhere.

We, and everything we have, can be consumed by fire, we cannot let pity consume us. Everyone has cancer cells in their body, it is simply a matter of your immune system keeping you cancer free. Our health, our finances, everything depends on us, if one has the discipline, himself, to take the 15% given to the government as social security insurance, and invest it in the power of compound interest. One could have the retirement on which he could depend, much more than he would get from the government. It is a matter of discipline. Television star Drew Carey lost 80 pounds of weight, lost his diabetic condition, all with discipline. From a 44 inch waist to a 33 inch waist, eating no carbohydrates at all.

Americans must learn to bow low to God and stand tall to other men. An old company, stalwart of conservatism like Sears, selling posters of semi-nude people. A company such as Home Depot, promoting the gay agenda, allowing employees to wear pro-gay buttons. Are patriotic Americans, or even Christian Americans, willing to take a stand for anything anymore. Remember, the church at Sardis thought they were alive, but Christ told them, through John the evangelist, that they were dead (Revelation 3:1-3). How many churches, playing, pretending, are just morgues with steeples?