Stuff

Oh my dear brothers and sisters how I do love you.  I pray that you can feel half the love from me that I feel from our glorious Father Yahweh.


"Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute."     Blaise Pascal


"By aspiring to a similitude in goodness or love, neither man nor angel ever transgressed, or shall transgress."     Sir Francis Bacon:  Advance of Learning, Bk, II


"When I pray miracles happen; when I stop they don't."     Mother Teresa


Don't worry I do have things to post.


"Who... has ever seen an idea?... Who has ever seen love?... Who has ever seen faith?... The real things in the world are the invisible spiritual realities.  Is it so difficult, then, to believe in God?"     Charles Templeton:  Harper & Row, Publishers inc.


"I hold that the Christian religion is the best yet promulgated, but do not thence infer that it is not susceptible to improvement; nor do I wish to confound it's doctrines with it's founder, and to worship one of my fellow beings."     Amos Bronson Alcott, Diary


"It is possible to give without loving, but impossible to love without giving."     Richard Braunstein


I'm setting the scene.


"To the reverent scientist.....  the simplest features of  the world about us are in themselves so awe-inspiring that there seems to be no need to seek new and greater miracles of God's care.     Carl Wallace Miller


"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh."     New Testament,  Ephesians 5:31


"God help the man who won't marrt until he finds the perfect woman, and God help him still more if he finds her."     Benjamin Tillet


Ok so that one was just for fun.....  I think.


"A pleasing preacher is too often an appeasing preacher."     Universalist Leader


"Most people are akin to the old theologian who said he was entirely open to conviction, but would like to see anybody who could convince him."     The Link


"There is no greater pride than in seeking to humiliate ourselves beyond measure!  And sometimes 
there is no greater humility than to attempt great works for God!"     Abbe de Saint-Cyran


"Beware of despairing about yourself; you are commanded to put your trust in God and not in yourself."     St. Augustine


Ok, so the answer is no...... 


What's the question?


Question: "Hey Tom did someone hit you upside the head with 10 gallons of quotes?


Nope, but now I have one for you.


Besides the fact that they are all great quotes what do they have in common?


Give up?  Good, I'd be worried if you could put it all together that fast without being in my head.  You see as different as all of these subjects are they are all things that I have had to deal with personally in the last two weeks.


I even found that perfect wife.  Oh, she may not be perfect to you, but I'll take her.  In fact I did take her as my completion as God intended 21 years ago the 15th of April.  And it scared me almost to death when I thought I might lose her last Monday night when I took her into the emergency room and discovered that she had been running a blood sugar of over 1,100.  You know I've seen people go into diabetic comas at 5 and 600.  And we are talking about a woman whose mother lost 3 toes on her left foot, her right leg just below the knee, her eyesight, her kidney functions and finally her life at the age of only 55 years old.  So imagine how hard I've been praying over this.  You see she gets out of the hospital tomorrow morning, but that's only the beginning of the problems we face with this.


Before I go any further I want to warn those who don't know that I suffer from a serious sleep disorder.  So my sleep schedule is that I did not sleep at all for 3 weeks until last Sunday night when I slept roughly 4 hours.  Oh, this last week?  Well, count up how many hours in a week then subtract from 3:00 last Monday morning which is about when I woke up and you'll know how long I've been awake this time. So I hope that you will understand if my thoughts get disjointed and jump around at times.  I'm used to living this way and will get to where I want but there may be some strange turns along the way.


Now back to Beautiful Becky.  The reason that she got so out of control with her blood sugar is quite simply that I don't get enough money on disability and both she and my son are currently unemployed.  So I'm trying to support a family of 4 on just over $1,000 a month.  Now I'm not complaining as much as you think.  Actually I consider myself lucky.  You see Beautiful Becky's grandmother owns the house we live in.  About 5 years ago it was decided that she would have to go into a retirement home and she decided to offer to let us live here rent free if we take care of the upkeep for her.  So that helps a lot right there.  As long as she stays living we have a place to stay and then it goes to Medicare for paying her retirement home once she went through her savings.  But I'd give it to them today if it would prolong her life since she is the only family Becky has left other than a brother she hasn't seen since 1998.  


And we own a nice 1993 Ford Taurus to get to where we need. I tell people that car is a true gift from God and I mean just that.  You see we had a new starter put on our last car before this by a auto garage.  Now before my body broke down on me I would have simply changed it myself but you do what you have to.  So that evening we drove across town to meet with some of Beautiful Becky's classmates for dinnier before they went to class across the street.  When we got there and shut the car off I noticed that it was smoking, but without thinking I just assumed that with the way my luck had been going at that time that the radiator was low and it was overheating.  So I mentioned it to Beautiful Becky and asked her to remind me to fill it when we came out and it had had time to cool down enough.  When we got inside we found that only part of our friends had arived so we had seats in the lobby while we waited.  After about 5 minutes or so I looked up and out of the window to see black smoke pouring from under the hood of our car.  You might know that as with all resteraunts they did have a fire extinguisher they let me use.  And someone had a sense of humor that day because I aimed it, pulled the pin, pressed the lever and stood there realising I had an empty extinguisher in my hands.  We did call 911 and the stood there watching the flames grow while we waited.  By the time they were able to get the fire out it had done so much damage that the inspector while he did agree that it was probably a faulty starter said that there was no way to tell for sure.  We did have insurance, but only liability and without proof there was no way to hold the garage at fault.Bar-b-que Dodge Dart anyone?


But you know we never had a problem getting anywhere after that and that's all owed to the fact that God has blessed us with some of the best friends ever. And while they made sure that we had rides we talked to another friend whose dad fixes up used cars and asked him to keep an eye out for one we could afford.  Beautiful Becky was working as office manager in our church at the time so we didn't expect it to take too long.  And about a month later we were setting in Sunday service when they anounced to us that we would receive our new car the next day.  Without our knowing it our friend had located our car and went to our church and told them that he would pay half if they would raise the rest and the rest is history.


So thanks to God and all of these wonderful people He has put in our lives we do have this great car.  The only problem is that it does take money for gas, insurance and upkeep so we're back to that nasty subject of money again.


I want to take a minute and plug an add for our good frind Mollie.  If you read her blog here at G.L.O.V.E. (and if you don't shame on you.  You don't know how much you are missing) then you already know, but being the children lover that she is Mollie has once again put together the annual Easter Egg Hunt for Christ Community United Methodist Church here in Wichita.  It will be held at the church at 2130 S. Webb this Saturday April 3rd from 1 to 4 pm.  Everything is open to the public and free of charge, so if you live in this area please comm and if not please pray for a successful event.


Anyhow, I supose I should be proud and tell you that things get tight, but I manage to make what I have stretch and get by.  The problem is that I lost whatever pride I might have ever had at the age of 15 when I was living under a bridge and when I could on top of a park building in the middle of winter.  So I'll be honest and tell you that more months than not lately dear Mollie has saved us with food from her church pantry plus even though she thinks I don't know it groceries she buys herself.  You see she's too modest to admit it, but I happen to know that this angel of a woman looks for sales when she shops for her family and gets extra just so she can help other people out.  No, she and her husband are not rich, they just care for others that much.


So, now I know that you are asking if we are that broke why we don't take Beautiful Becky to a free clinic.  I admit that there are several here in town including one that rents space in our own church.  But the simple truth is that unlike larger cities free clinics in Wichita are never free and they can refuse to treat you.


The good news is that the people in the hospital talked with one of them and got them to agree to see her at a reduced rate.  The bad news is that even reduced we still have to come up with the money for the medicine and 2 types of insulin plus all of the supplies.  Plus she's now on a special diet again and it's not something she can ignore anymore.


So I'll do the only thing I know to do and trust God to take care of us.  I may have to give up some of my own meds to afford hers until things get better.


I guess I should be like a lot of my friends and count on all of the great socialist medical care from the new law the President signed last week.  Or the one that got publicized anyhow since he did sign another one.  But I have several problems with this new law myself.  Please understand that these are my own oppinions and not those of G.L.O.V.E. or it's Admin Council.  My first problem is that if Socialized medicine is so great then how come everyone in countries that have it and can afford the cost come to the U.S. for treatment?  You see care there may be free, but the wait for care typically runs into months or even years.  I know that we all complain about the high cost of medical care, but it attracts the best doctors in the world to practice here, although I prefer that they practice in school and know how to do the job when they treat me.  


Do you realize that the bill never was passed by the House of Represetatives.  It did pass the Senate vote, but was voted down in the house.  So what they did was to draw up what they termed a fix-it bill to go through the House.  But in this new bill where most people would never notice a clause was inserted stating that passage of it would be deemed to be passage of the original Senate bill.  That meant that the President could then ignore the fix-it bill and sign the other one into effect leaving him free to use the line item veto to take anything out of the fix-it bill before he signs it with no fanfare.


Did you know that the law is unconstitutional due to the fact that it makes changes in social security?  Our own national laws state that no changes can be made to social security as a part of another bill but must be dealt with on their own.  Several states have already filed lawsuits, but I don't have much hope of the Supreme Court overturning the law with it already in effect.  The only other way would be to repeal it which would first take a 2 thirds vote in both branches of Congress then two thirds of the states would have to ratify it.  Good luck.


Did you know that this law takes tax money to pay for abortions.  Now I admit that I am not pro life or pro abortion because as a man I feel I have no right to tell any woman what she can do, but I do have a problem with the taxpayers paying for them.  Instead of taking our money to make it easy for women to get abortions why can't we use it to make it easier for others to adopt the children?  As many orphans as we have most people who adopt go outside the country because it is cheaper and with less red tape.


Kansas Rep. Todd Moran tried to get small rural Hospitals exempted from budget cuts in the new law.  A Rep from Texas tried to get a tax cut for child care of parents making less than $50,000 added.  There is a list of over 30 such ammendments were tried to be added by various republican Rep.s All were voted down because to add them would force the bill to back through the Senate and back again.


This new law will in no way make medical care free.  What it does in reality is to make it illegal not to buy insurance.  I admit that the government will be able to undersell private insurance, but with unemployment hovering at 10% and congress not voting to extend benefits this time how many out there will still be unable to afford it besides myself?


The good news in all of this is that it will finally creat those new jobs the President has been promising.  It's predicted that they will have to hire 60,000 new employees at the I.R.S. to collect the new taxes I mean fines from those who don't have insurance.


Ok, I won't beat a dead horse, but I do have to wonder one thing.  If they can force people to buy their medical coverage against their will and most people don't even realize what is happening how hard would it be if the right person got into power to have people lining up for new tatoos?  No, I don't mean our current President, but he won't be in office forever.


I have decided that I will be posting a sermon for Maundy Thursday.  I will be talking about love, but not directly about Christ's love.  I'm reserving that topic for Easter Sunday.  Also I am working on one for Black Friday that deals with the duel nature's of Jesus.  Thanks to my friend Paul I have a new perspective on it.


Please don't forget our Resurrection Vigil.  It will run from Thursday morning through Sunday.  For more details on it please check the front page of the website. I must admit that I am disapointed in the response so far.  I have no way if any of you are inviting friends though I pray you will, but I personally invited over 800 people on Face Book.  The last time I checked there were not quite 30 who said they will take part, right at 50 who said maybe and 300 who said no.  Now I'm not taking this personally but I admit that I am dismayed.  All we are asking is that at any time you can during these 4 days that you pray for a resurrection of Christianity.  That's it.  Like I said I'm not going to take it personally and I'm not giving up, but I did think I was a better motivator than that.  Especially since a good amount of the no's have come from friends I have attended church with and thought were more devout than this.  But I'll bet God makes use of those who take part anyhow.


My daughter came home today.  She spent the weekend in Tulsa with her youth group at Acquire The Fire.  I want to thank those of you who helped her to go this year.  She came back so full of the Holy Spirit that she has applied for a year internship traveling with them to do work like set up and take down an working as an usher and selling things etc.  She wants it so bad she's willing to go to college for the year in Texas and she hates Texas.


Well, It's now 1:00 in the morning so I supose I should get this posted.  I have a lot more I could say, but I have a lot more work I need to do.


God bless you my brothers and sisters with blessings you don't expect.
Pastor Tom