Real Men Cry

Real Men Cry

            There is no such thing as secret discipleship. There is no human diagnosis like the sickness of the mind. I was reminded this week of my first visit to St. Peters in Rome (I have been there several times, blessed by several Popes.) A man was threatening suicide from the great gold Dome of St. Peter's. (Designed by Michelangelo, still to this day a marvel of architecture and one of the largest churches in the world.) I believe it was in the year 1960, and just as this week, a man threatening to jump, suicide. This year, last date August, 37,000 suicides in America. One of the greatest problems in the military service, suicide.

            Just yesterday, this totally blind, 100% disabled veteran, was sitting in a reception area of a veterans facility. Of course I could not see, only hear them but they were old men who had given up on the world and their country-describing their treatment in the insanity of veteran care facilities...the paradox that welfare dependant citizens, young, having never given anything to their country, receive all the livelihood necessities of life without problem. Some of these real men would cry as they talked about their physical conditions, just the dollar cost of survival (food will never again, in this world, be as cheap as it is today. The middle class is shrinking, everyone should prepare for worse times.)

            Those in the healthcare fields know, without a doubt, that many deaths are suicide, caused by overdosing or simply a neurosis of giving up. BIG PHARMA CONTROLS-REGULATES-OWNS THE BODY CARE INDUSTRY IN AMERICA. Big pharma profits are not made from healthy people, nutrition-supplments. Money is made from sick people. So many citizens, of every age-of every situation could be saved just by common sense living. They have been dumbed down, do not want to eat correctly-exercise, just want a Band-Aid-piece of paper to help them feel better and keep doing the same things. People on chemo are considered cured if they are still living five years after cancer treatment although they may still be fighting cancer.

            There are 26 million Americans with diabetes, 100 million a pre-diabetic condition. By 2020, $3.5 trillion will be spent on this one disease alone. More amputations throughout the world from diabetes than anything else, 100,000 legs each year.

            Beginning with the first born in the world, Cain and his brother Able, Cain asking God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9). Our long suffering God just seems to put up with us, having been given free will, a choice of good or evil.

            I have often wondered why God does not just stomp people who are so cruel to others? Even brothers James and John, asked Jesus the same question when wanting to call down fire from Heaven and destroy their enemies (Luke 9:54). Real men do cry over decadent-unfair conditions in the world as well as the "grip" of sadness. The shortest verse in The Bible, Jesus wept  when his friend Lazarus, brother of Mary and Martha, died (John 11:35).  This old, blind veteran weeps many times at night just thinking of the deplorable world conditions.

            The most hurt I have experienced as an adult, a relative coming by my house for a brief visit. When he came in, he said, "I brought you some food from the restaurant where we ate lunch." I said, "Put it in the kitchen I will have it later." After he and his wife left and I went in to check on my food, I found they had brought me the table scraps from their plates....bread which would have been fine if they had not buttered and eaten part of it, etc. How nice it would have been for them to just bring me an order of un-abused food from the restaurant. Life is too short to be cruel to one another, regardless of circumstances. One of the finest doctors I ever knew, now a retired VA doctor, told me of even recent Iraq and Afghanistan warriors just being "patched up." Often wounds still draining, not even antibiotics. He said to me, "I stopped crying long ago but I can not stop the tears anymore."

            There is a discipline in thinking of the needs of other people. Dr. Einstein said, "I mess around with numbers." Others of us have seen too much pain and we mess around with words. This writer has tried to describe the pain I have felt in seeing the sickness-sorrows AS A TRAVELER OF THE WORLD. I could only describe the long line of prisoners, chained together, being removed from and a train on the Tran Siberian Railroad and heading into the horrors of Siberia, as I was crossing Russia. I can only describe the prisoners, their bodies opened, organs being removed-transplanted to others, in a hospital, in Manchuria, China. I was often left to wonder why God does not just destroy such cruelty. But, God is so longsuffering. Longsuffering, even forgiving, to even me. "The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

            Most Medicare tax dollars are used during the last year of your life. We well know, the time will come, that old people will not be kept alive because of the fact of cost. The secret of discipleship, any age, "O LORD of hosts, blessed [is] the man that trusteth in thee" (Psalm 84:12). The panoply of discipleship, wearing the full armor of God, able to live through the valleys as well as the mountain top experiences of life. There will always be a body of believers who actually believed God when he said, "I am the truth."