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| Life moves at a glacial pace, honestly. I always laugh when I watch a biography on television and the narrator will say something like, "After working in Chicago for five years he moved on to..."
Five years is a lot of work, a lot of struggle, and a lot of hours to merely push aside in a three second sentence. Something tells me that I am in the three second sentence right now. And I'm not alone.
 | Currently Watching
Wide Awake
By Joseph Cross, Timothy Reifsnyder, Dana Delany, Denis Leary, Robert Loggia
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| I have been thinking quite a lot about pain recently. It all began when I watched a television show about a 7 year old girl named Gabby Gingras who has a condition that on the surface, most of us would envy. It is called hereditary sensory autonomic neuropathy, or HSAN, which leaves all the nerves in the body unable to feel pain of any kind. The condition was first discovered when the Gingras family noticed that little Gabby’s fingers would always cut and bleeding, sometime to an extreme degree. After consulting countless doctors, they eventually arrived at a terrifying conclusion- Gabby would never feel physical pain in her entire life. The doctors advised her parents to have all of her baby teeth removed so that she wouldn’t continue to chew on her fingers or tongue, but this led to her adult teeth growing in prematurely, she has since knocked out all but one. Gabby must wear protective goggles every minute of the day because when she two years old she caused irreparable damage to both of her eyes, one of which is now replaced by a prosthetic.
It seems that pain is all around us, and only grows as we become older. I know that recently I have said aloud, “I’m not as young as I used to be,” as my back aches occasionally and headaches become a more frequent occurrence. I know for many of you in the congregation you have had countless ailments, and debilitating conditions that lower your quality of laugh and make it difficult to get out of bed many days. It seems that pain is a part of life, and for good reason. In Gabby’s case, she has never learned what it felt like to touch a hot pan on the stove and therefore has burnt herself repeatedly over the seven short years of her life. As a matter of fact, most doctors say that it is highly unlikely that she will reach the average life expectancy, as she could have life threatening injuries that will go unnoticed because of her condition.
It seems that pain serves a crucial purpose in our lives. It lets us know that is something is wrong, and that we need to address the problem. C.S. Lewis in his amazing book called The Problem of Pain, says this: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world." It seems that people find God, time and time again, when something is wrong with their lives. They feel empty, defeated, depressed, and hopeless and through this pain God miraculously shows up, and shouts in their ear: “I am here. I’ve always been here. And I always will be here.” For some reason we don’t hear his voice when we get the promotion at work, get the praise for our good deeds, or come upon a great sum of money. But when our children disappoint us, or the community is forgetting us, or our spouse is divorcing us, God shows up in the midst of that pain, for it is the only time we are willing to listen.
The next time you get a headache, or a sore back, or a stiff knee. I want you to thank God for bringing pain in to your life, for without it we would have never known the Great Physician.
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| "Stop, Traveller! Near this place lies John Locke. If you ask what kind of a man he was, he answers that he lived content with his own small fortune. Bred a scholar, he made his learning subservient only to the cause of truth. This you will learn from his writings, which will show you everything else concerning him, with greater truth, than the suspect praises of an epitaph. His virtues, indeed, if he had any, were too little for him to propose as matter of praise to himself, or as an example to you. Let his vices be buried with him. Of good life, you have an example in the gospel, should you desire it; of vice, would there were none for you; of mortality, surely you have one here and everywhere, and may you learn from it. That he was born on the 29th of August in the year of our Lord 1632, and that he died on the 28th of October in the year of our Lord 1704, this tablet, which itself will soon perish, is a record."
Epitaph of John Locke
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| Whenever I hear a beautiful love song I get jealous. How can all of us feel the same emotion, yet so few of us are able to convey that in such a beautiful, poignant, and truthful way?
Our feelings for that other person must go unspoken, only hinted at, by inexact words and poorly executed actions.
I wonder if that's how mentally handicapped people feel about every aspect of their life. If so, that must be an unimaginable agony.
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