Today's Visit to Wound Care

I went to the Wound Care Clinic in HEB today. Dr. Sotman says the foot is doing well. The nurse had me look at the bottom of the foot for the first time in a long time. It is now no longer one big wound, but two much smaller wounds, one of which is not so very far from being completely healed. The other wound is where the surgery to remove the toe bones occurred and it is progressing slower, but Dr. Sotman says the tissue is nice and pink and looking good as well. The best news is that Dr. Sotman thinks a Christmas trip to Birmingham, AL to spend Christmas with our daughters is absolutely doable. That is indeed good news! The foot is slowly but surely healing and my goal is to be back at work when everyone returns from the holidays in January. Pray to that end and that the foot continues on its present progress!

Thanksgiving

How does one really give thanks to God for all the blessings one has?

I have so much this year to be thankful for. Actually, I have always had so much to be thankful for in a life full of good things. But until now my senses, my awareness of things, has been dulled by a cold kind of selfishness that has governed my life. However, my brush with death this past summer brought me face to face with my mortality and I am now truly reminded of all of the good gifts I have been given.

I am thankful beyond measure tonight for my life, a gift that we simply too often take for granted. I am thankful for my Mom and Dad and brother and sister and the rich Christian heritage given to me by my family of origin. I am thankful to God for my loving, caring wife, Karen, who has been by my side in all of this and her gifts of loving and caring for people. I give grateful thanks to God for my two wonderful daughters, Katie and Mary Beth, for their husbands, Matt and Caleb, and for the commitment of all of them to the faith. I am thankful for the gift of pets and their delightful little personalities as they brighten my life. I am thankful for extended family and a wealth I have of wonderful friends. It is in moments of crisis that one realizes just how many and how wide that circle is. I am thankful beyond measure for my church family at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth. The wideness, deepness, and richness of their caring and compassion during this period of my life can neither be measured nor repaid. I love you, church family, and am honored and blessed by God to be a member of such a community. And finally, I am thankful to God for His Son, Jesus and the mercy and grace God has shown to such a pig-headed, stubborn human such as I am.

I am reminded of a song by Billy Crockett...."Let us be thankful boys and girls..." for so many things!

The Advent Conspiracy

Advent is upon us and I have a suggestion...no, really a request for all of you....

As he got older my Dad and I used to have conversations about Christmas and all the hassle of buying gifts for family members, finding just the right gift, how much money to spend, etc. I would ask him what he wanted for Christmas. He would always reply that he had enough, and really didn't need anything else. He suggested that we give gifts to those who really needed them in the family's name. We never really convinced the other family members about this wish, but it has become even more importnant to me now.

My near death experience this summer has caused me to do a great deal of thinking. I look around myself and realize that I have all that I really need...a lovely, loving wife, two wonderful daughters and their wonderful husbands, my dogs and the cat who give me great delight, great extended family and friends and a loving church home. I have enough to eat and a warm place to sleep. But what I really have is the one gift that God gave me this summer, more life to experience all of these wonderful things.

Because of this I want to invite you to join the Advent Conspiracy. This year instead of spending all of that money on gifts we don't need or will return the day after Christmas, why not spend that money on real gifts? Give the gift that you have been given to others, the gift of life. Spend your money on gifts that will really make a difference in the lives of people throughout the world. Join the Advent Conspiracy...and change the season to one of true gift giving. If you want to know what I would like for Christmas, then understand the conspiracy! Give the gifts of life...clean water, animals, school supplies, meals....real hope, real change.

Here are several places to find real opportunities to give the gift of life:

http://www.adventconspiracy.org - Watch the video! Give the gift of clean water to people who need it...a thing so simple that we take for granted.

http://www.heifer.org - give a charitable gift to provide animals to change people's lives.

http://www.thefellowship.info - Check out the CBF Gift Catalog and find multiple opportunities to change lives world wide.

What if Christmas became a world changing event again?

Come join the Conspiracy!

     God, who gives seed to the farmer to plant, and later on good crops to harvest and eat, will give you more and more seed to plant so that you can give away more and more fruit from your harvest.
     Yes, God will give you much so that you can give away much, and when you take your gifts to those who need them they will break out into thanksgiving and praise to God for your help.
     So, two good things happen as a result of your gift - those in need are helped, and many overflow with thanks to God.
     Those you help will be glad not only because of your generous gifts to themselves and to others, but they will praise God for this proof that you really do love the Lord. 
     And they will pray for you with deep fervor and feeling because of the wonderful grace of God within you.
     Thank God for His Son - His gift to wonderful for words.
                                         - II Corinthians 9:10-15 from the Living New Testament
 

My New Blog

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There's have been no room for the child.

Madeleine L'Engle

The above is just a thought for the Advent season.  I've created my own new blog to share my thoughts and contemplations for any who are interested in reading.


http://exploringthemystery.blogspot.com

Tim

Real Worship...The ordinary and extraordinary aspects in the movement of God's grace

"Mass had already begun, and the priest was reading the epistle. Then a brother in a brown robe came out, and you could see he was going to lead the children in singing a hymn. High up behind the altar St. Francis raised his arms up to God, showing the stigmata in his hands; the children began to sing. Their voices were very clear, they sang loud, their song soared straight up into the roof with a strong and direct flight and filled the whole church with its clarity. Then when the song was done, and the warning bell for consecration chimed in with the last notes of the hymn and the church filled with the vast rumour of people going down on their knees everywhere in it: and then the priest seemed to be standing in the exact center of the universe. Then the bell rang again, three times.

Before any head was raised again the clear cry of the brother in the brown robe cut through the silence with the words: 'Yo creo...' 'I believe' which immediately all the children took up after him with such loud and strong and clear voices, and such unanimity and such meaning and such fervor that something went off inside of me like a thunderclap and without seeing anything or apprehending anything extraordinary through any of my senses (my eyes were open on precisely what was there, the church), I knew with the most absolute and unquestionable certainty that before me, between me and the altar, somewhere in the center of the church, up in the air (or any other place because in no place), but directly before my eyes, or directly present in some apprehension or other of mine which was above that of the senses, was at the same time God in all His essence, all His power, all His glory, and God in Himself and God surrounded by the radiant faces of the uncountable thousands upon thousands of saints contemplating His glory and praising His Holy Name. And so the unshakable certainty, the clear and immediate knowledge that heaven was right in front of me, struck me like a thunderbolt and went through me like a flash of lightning and seemed to lift me clean up off the earth."

Thomas Merton quoted on pg. 151 of The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton, by Michael Mott

I love my church, Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas and I am grateful to have had moments like Merton describes in the serious work of worship that goes on each Sunday there.

Christ the King

Tomorrow is the end of the church liturgical year. It is Christ the King Sunday. We began the seasons of the church year last Advent with anticipation, but we end the seasons of the church year with a certainty. In Advent we waited for the needed and longed-for definitive and ultimate self-disclosure of God in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. On Reign of Christ Sunday we celebrate the fulfillment of the biblical revelation of God in Christ.

Here in light of Christ's triumphant presence we find our voice and declare once again, Jesus Christ is Lord of all and shall reign as Lord in my life.

Revelation 1:4-8

Friday

So, Friday was a lovely day...my pcp decided it was time for me to have a colonoscopy and an upper GI. My iron was very low when I was in the hospital in June and my doctor wanted to rule out all possibilities other than the infection I had. Besides, everyone over 50 should have one. So mine happened Friday morning. I must say that the procedures were not that bad since I was out most of the time, particularly for the upper GI. The preparation for it the night before, however, was no fun at all. Taking all that stuff to empty you out is bad enough when you have both legs and no wound vacc. Since I have one leg and a wound vacc, it meant camping out in the downstairs bathroom until all was done. Let me tell you, that's no fun...lol. We had to be there at 7:15 Friday morning which meant not a lot of sleep. We were finished and out before 9:30 and then went and had the best tasting breakfast I ever had. The good news is that everything is normal and I don't need to have it again for eight years.

The following is a nice video sent to me from my friend, Charlie Shapard, in honor of the event!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N0w2rORwSc