Infectious Disease

Last night I was chatting online with a friend, and learned they had just come down with Shingles. I think it is Chicken Pox’s older cousin, a part of the Cooties family. Chatting through Microsoft Communicator, not through a browser, on my work laptop.

Today, I go upstairs to check the scores on my personal PC, open up Chrome, and am blasted with “Now’s the time, before it’s too late, to get your Shingles’ shot” sidebar adds.

Within 12 hours of communicating on a separate computer, separate chat program, about a friend’s cooties, I have been targeted with adds. Apparently, Shingles is more contagious than one may initially assume, given the rate it seems to spread online.

Screwtape Letters 1-5

1. Letter 1: No Tall Poppy Here
1. Screwtape encouraged Wormwood to latch onto "how enslaved they [humans] are to the pressure of the ordinary." What are these pressures? How do they help Screwtape?
2. S/T warns Wormwood against engaging in argument? Why? What could go wrong for S/T and his purposes?
3. The power of distraction (I forgot what my question was)
2. Letter 2: Church Disappointment
1. We encounter the Church in all its crude, boring and hypocritical actuality. This encounter can enchant pride in our self and disenchant our self regarding others. How has the church been a snare?
2. How does the Enemy use our disappointment in the Church for His purpose?
3. What about the Church does S/T not want us to see?
3. Letter 3: Family Annoys Us
1. Prayer, where we separate spiritually minded thoughts from the physical actions and interactions with those in our lives.
2. Family, where we get annoyed, and justifiably annoy others because they first annoyed us. 
3. Challenge: who annoys you? why? what in them and their actions gets to you? Now ask: is there anything in you, in your view of yourself, in your view of them, which is to some degree responsible for the annoyance you are feeling?
4. Challenge: does any of our religious/church behavior annoy our family/close friends? Do we justify our actions because they are religious/church actions, regardless of the fact they annoy others (turn a blind eye, hide our actions behind the veil of God)?
5. What 'spiritual' acts do we partake in that could just as easily serve Screwtape's purposes as the Enemy's purpose?
4. Letter 4: Being Spiritual
1. Why does S/T like 'moods'?
2. S/T encouragement: create a god to help you concentrate, then concentrate on that god. Why is this dangerous?
5. Letter 5: War (hunh), what is it good for? (less than Wormwood thinks)
1. "Do not allow any temporary excitement to distract you from the real business of undermining faith and preventing the formation of virtues."
2. Spiritually speaking, why is war a strange mixture of good and bad?

A Bit of a Letdown

10 weeks ago (read this) I experienced some level of a healing, a personal healing of my jaw, which was misplaced 20 weeks ago (read here). Not sure what happened, and scared to share this healing before others in case I was wrong, I kept quiet. Daily, I awoke, and told God that tomorrow I would share the good news. 

After a few weeks, my jaw, not hurting yet still the constant focus of my every thought, began to hurt again. And after a few more weeks, it hurt as much as it ever had.

What does that say about me, God, healing, and the physical dynamic of my jaw line? Am I in pain because I didn't have the faith to announce to the world God's healing? Was I not in pain before because I had faith that God healed me? If God is directly involved with my jaw, then (respectfully) what is His angle?

Today, I asked my Doctor for his advice. Dr. Saltz encouraged patience, that my tendons (or ligaments, I can never remember which is which) are stretched out, and that it will take 6+ months to heal. Bring on the pills, don't chew gum, seek understanding, and hope my jaw heals.

If only…

If I only had a means to quickly and easily access my blog,

A means to jot my thoughts, satire and introspection without all of the hassle of ‘getting on the internet’ and typing ‘blog’ before the auto-fil remembers the correct website address and automatically sends me to my blog’s home page…

If only, then I would more readily blog, would more readily share my collective wisdom with the world at large.

It looks as if I have been saved from this toil by Windows Live Writer, where I only have to open the program to write the blog, rather than take the arduous journey previously outlined.

I welcome this blessing that tackles the challenges of the first world.

There and back again, a hobbit's (no a tween's) tale

In July I went on a mission trip to Lexington Kentucky with my church youth group. we were going to do a VBS with some kids that were less fortunate than us. we went to a community center that was behind a school, and fed the kids, (and ourselves) lunch, and the Mrs. Penny, (the team leader,) did a lesson with them. we used some videos called Ranger Todd, (made by Houston Coley's father,) and we did some games and crafts. also we worked in a garden, went shopping for KRM, (Kentucky Refugee Ministries) and
played a game where we were refugees ourselves. we were staying in a dorm at UK (University of Kentucky) so there were some college students there with us. when we did things in the morning, like work in the community garden, or play the simulation game, we were doing this with two people named Geoff and Sherry. they were helping us, and we did a devotion with them sometimes, and we saw them often. there were 13 people going on the trip. Mrs. Penny, Mrs. Jillian, Mrs. Amber, Mr.David, Trey, Houston, Andy, Jill, Emma, Maggie, Louise, Alexa, and Me, Emily.

We all had a great time, and we hope that the kids we worked with did too.

Here is a short video showing some of the work we did in Lexington. This was filmed and put together by my friend Houston Coley: Lexington 2012
Also, here is some of the Ranger Todd videos.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d96aXzO4O9g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az0xC7Dv8JE   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNPNqYYr_Bs&feature=youtube_gdata