That was the headline of an AP article in Monday's Kansas City Star--all about deep vein thrombosis and the US Surgeon General's campaign to bring more public awareness to a medical problem that kills more than 100,000 Americans a year. That's what unexpectedly landed me in the hospital for four days last week.
I am thankful to God for the way He arranged circumstances to get me to the Emergency Room when I thought I could tough it out, and for great medical care, and the development of drugs that got me back on my feet in a hurry. I'm thankful for God's protection and sustaining power that kept pieces of a "massive" clot from breaking off and moving to my lungs while this thing was growing for probably a month. I'm thankful for friends and family who cared and prayed and were there for me.
This article is really worth reading. And it might help save your life some day.
Read it here.
"The deep fear behind every loss is that we have been abandoned by the God who should have saved us. The transforming moment in Christian conversion comes when we realize that even God has left us. We then discover it was not God, but our image of God that abandoned us.... Only then is change possible." --Craig Barnes
Christian conversion--isn't that what happens when we ask God to save us? Oh yes, but so much more--we need to continue to be converted, to be transformed, to have not only our "souls" saved, but our minds. We come to Him with such a pathetic limited understanding of who God is, sometimes even a wrong one, but He in His mercy takes us where we are, and at the same time is never content to leave us there.
Life happens. Sometimes in the most unexpected ways. It seems like only in the storms of life can we learn the truth--that NOTHING, not life, not death, not angels or demons, neither our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow--not even the powers of hell can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That's good enough for me.
I just finished this book....I'll give it 6 stars on a 5-star scale. it was very impacting and timely. This is a story about a particularly hard time in American history, but it is also about the sometimes crushing effects of "progress"--what happens when government and everything else gets bigger and bigger and little people get destroyed and left behind. It exposes the ugliness of greed--getting rich by exploiting the poor. The prose was powerful and driving--invoked a sense of inevitability and urgency.
It also exposed the ugliness of religious fanaticism. There is a preacher who has left preaching behind in his disillusionment, but you begin to see that his struggle is a journey towards real life and truth. He came out of the certainty of his religion--he thought he'd become lost, but he was really finding his way. He came out of a religion that was devoid of life and finally begins to see the truth, awakes to true life and finds satisfaction in his God-given mission.
If you've seen the movie, it's like reading the back cover of the book--not a bad introduction.
