doctor's appt.

I got my annual check up this morning. It only took an hour to get looked at minimally (that's what he charged me for) a blood work, a1c, and a urine panel. I love the efficiency.

I go to a clinic in a hispanic area. Everyone is Spanish first except my doctor. That's why they give him to me. He seems competent. My nurse aide who weighed me and took my blood was definitely have to think before speaking English.

I do not want to name them because I do not want to throw them under the bus but since I did not have insurance they gave me a sizable discount. Now I love them but it's not imperative that they do this. In fact at first I did mumble "I'm good". But when my doctor pressed on I kept quiet. He discounted my final cost for all work about 25%. When the aides started to do the work they made sure I knew the price and could pay it. So they have been trained to think a person with no insurance must be indigent. This despite all evidence to the contrary, my obesity, my clothes, my medicine scripts.

But this makes me nervous when I think about it. It means that the price I got would be paid in full, without question by any insurance company. Insurance raises the prices. And full social medicine will be even more expensive. It is not only more expensive per visit, with more tests taken just because someone else is paying for it. To the user it looks free so they will be using it more. This may help the health of some people but some will get no benefit at all. Others might actually be harmed.

Acts 8

Simon the Magician is rebuked. I wonder why. On the surface it seems innocent. But the commentator says he wants the power to confer the Holy Spirit for personal gain. That is reasonable since that is how he lived before he accepted Jesus. This is certainly a good explanation of why he was rebuked so strongly. Yet Jesus told his disciples not to rebuke those healing in his name. They too were using the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said those who use his name for good are not likely to turn and speak ill of him. Could it be that the apostles are jealous of their power? I wonder. In a similar situation Jesus did not seem jealous of his power being used in an "unauthorized" manner.

Then next we have the story of Philip and the Ethiopian. As here we have two Simons, so here we have two Philips. My commentator identifies this as the Philip who was appointed to wait on tables, along with Stephen, and not Philip the apostle.

So it Acts 7 and 8 we have stories of the two servants (deacons) who took on the function of evangelists. They are preaching about Jesus enthusiastically. And because they are preaching, maybe, the Holy Spirit is manifesting himself in great power. We are told that about both Stephen and Philip. Along with their preaching come great signs and wonders. Neither of these men are apostles, they are servants (deacons) yet the Holy Spirit is with them too.

Philip baptizes the Ethiopian official after he accepts Christ as his savior. Did he receive the Holy Spirit? It does not really say. I think he did. Because an early church in Ethiopia traces itself back to this same official who went back and explained what he knew from Philip and the Old Testament to many people.

The stoning of Stephen began a persecution, seemingly led by Saul (later Paul). We are told that he invaded homes and put people in jail. I assume many who would not recant were killed. How else do you explain so many leaving Jerusalem? They were fleeing for their lives. To flee your home like this is to lose all you worked for, all your inheritance. It makes you a refugee. It would take serious risk to make someone do that.

The commentator says that this persecution greatly increased the spread of the gospel. Ironically persecution often works the opposite of what opponents intend. It causes people to leave their comfort zones and get out to tell the good news. When we are comfortable we often get lazy don't we?

reading about Catholic and Jewish culture

DW and I have started reading Kemelman's "Rabbi" series. You know starting with "Friday the Rabbi came late". You learn a whole lot about Jewish culture. I'd say Kemelman gets it wrong a bit when he has his character comment on the dominate Christian culture. But it may be how a Jewish person sees it. But it's the view of an outsider. Some of it is over generalized at least.

So now I have picked up a "Father Dowling" mystery by Ralph McInerny. In these you get a glimpse of a Catholic parish culture.

I remember the short lived TV series based on this character and starring the wonderful Tom Bosley. Bosley was a great character actor with an amazing voice. In our house we wished it had stayed on the year longer. It was just so fun. The TV show has a fairly cute nun for a side kick. There was also a housekeeper played by the venerable Mary Wickes. She is also in the book and seems to be a similar character one who will get a lot of punch lines.

Funny in both of them the best friend of the man of the cloth is a small time sheriff or police officer. I guess that is a good point of contact for a person who is going to solve murder mysteries.

hello - Happy Father's Day!

We went to Discovery Green last night to their "swap meet". It was mostly craft shops, actually just a few. About 10. I thought the airplanes made from Coke cans were very cool. The propellers spun in the wind. And there was another guy who also was making stuff from trash. He had several birdhouses. One was pretty amazing. It was made with a metal butter churn. They all had holes and perches. Both of those things were tempting. But not enough.

A couple of people were explaining and trying to be entertaining to influence sales. But I saw no sales I don't think. I think the participants were a bit frustrated.

There were a couple of clothes shops. One seems to have created clothes. Another had what seemed to be if not used, then stuff from overstocks.

We saw a couple of people with ice cream cones but we could never see where they got them. There were three companies selling from vans next to the site. One sold cupcakes, one sold New Orleans style ices (?) and one sold wraps. We decided we could make food at home.

There was a young band doing live music. There were quite a few people sitting on blankets to enjoy the music. It was OK, good background.

Rain

We did not get rain. Did you? I heard today that Garden Oaks got rain. I was in Baytown yesterday afternoon. As I drove in I could see a heavy cell of rain to the left. Well the road turned left and I entered a heavy rain just as I got to my destination, Goose Creek High School. I waited in the car for a while and the rain finally lessened. But I thought it was funny that everything around this was bone dry. I had to go to the one place in the area with a heavy rain cell. Meanwhile I am sprinkling my yard and fruit trees.

Today I got a carabiner in my morning service for Father's Day. Perhaps funny: The pastor took Ruth to speak about men and fathers. This was because a lady used Ruth when she spoke on Mother's Day last month. Sort of a joke. Of course he took Boaz as his example. It actually worked pretty well.

This morning I got an hour walk. I always try to find new roads around here. Surprisingly I found one and a fairly big "midden" - a place where people were dumping. I came back along the railroad tracks. You get to the back sides of buildings when you go on the tracks. I got to see the business end of some businesses. Sometimes that is interesting. I found a few interesting things.

Happy Father's Day to you fathers. Do you think people have made a bigger deal of Father's Day this year? I think so. I guess that is good. Fatherhood is a great institution. But I get embarrassed by all the cheerfulness.

Acts 6 - Stephen's martyrdom

I've been reading Acts 6 - Stephen's martyrdom in the Greek group I attend on Tuesday nights. And now it has come up in the daily readings that I follow. Stephen preaches a very long sermon to the Sanhedrin. In our Greek group we laughingly wonder why Stephen took so long to get to his point. At first you wonder what the point is. The first time I was truly wondering what was the point of all the examples. This is the advantage of reading things over again. The second time it was revealed to me. I saw the point of each of his examples. Stephen finally states his point - you Jews have throughout history persecuted the prophets God sent to you. You killed the prophets who spoke beforehand of Jesus, the Messiah.

I guess you can say the best way to tell people something is, by your examples, to let them figure it out for themselves and then tell them the conclusion, which they already know. Surely they know his point long before he states it. I wonder why they let him conclude.

The Greek word order is very different than the word order in English translations. In English the subject of the sentence has to come early. In Greek the fact that a word is the subject is made clear because it is in the nominative case. Luke often buries the subject far back on the sentence. This makes the Greek awkward to translate. Certainly you cannot keep the Greek word order in the English. In Greek the first words are placed there for emphasis. So it is interesting to see the words Luke chooses to put at the beginning.

The synagogue of the Freedman (Acts 6:9) is probably the one Saul (Paul) attended. I think this was a group of foreigners who tried, out of insecurity, to "out Jewish" the locals of Jerusalem.

Jesus told them they would be persecuted just as he was and when they were brought before the courts to trust God to give them the words to say. This is our first example. It is certain one of many times where the new Christians would have to defend their faith and possibly die. The others are not recorded but they are just as precious to God. God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, is with Stephen with great power.

In Muslim countries today this same technique of bringing false witnesses is used to persecute Christians. These witnesses claim the Christian has said sometime to offend Mohammed or the Koran. As a result they are often killed by people who think they are doing God's will. As in this story in Acts false witnesses are a common tactic used by the enemy of God, Satan.

evening sermon

I did not get to hear the morning sermon since I was driving in from Fort Worth. More on that perhaps later. Maybe. The gospel reading provoked three questions from the pastor:

1. What is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit?

2. Who are my mother and my brothers?

3. Does a kingdom divided on itself inevitably fall?

The first two have been discussed a lot. I think he gave good answers. But I am interested in the third question since he had a unique take on this. He said that the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God are on completely different levels. God is the creator, Satan is simply God's creation who rebelled and became evil. Satan's kingdom, like a worldly kingdom, can fall when divided.

But God's kingdom is on an entirely different plane. God's kingdom can and will be divided. Past experience and history shows us that the church of God is always fighting amongst themselves. Yet it will stand because God will make it stand. Jesus goes on to explain that if one wants to steal from someone, first you bind him up, then steal from him. If you are not able to do that it would be foolish to try.

Well no one can bind up Jesus. He is God's son. However that is just what Jesus did, he bound up Satan and plundered the souls that Satan proposed to take for himself.

So when Jesus spoke of a kingdom divided upon itself he was talking about earthly kingdoms, the kind his hearers would be familiar with. But God's kingdom is uniquely different. Thank God that even with division God's kingdom will finally stand. It has stood for two millenia now and so we can be confident that despite all the petty fighting and disagreements on doctrine it will continue to stand. This is to God's glory really. Praise God that he is God and we are not!

Convention adventure

We made it into Fort Worth last night and checking into our Priceline hotel. The price really was pretty good if we can go by the attendant who's body language made it seem he thought we were cheating his hotel. heh

This morning I saw at least three other parties in this hotel who are going to the convention. They were not very talkative. Perhaps they had not gotten their coffee yet.

DW is sleeping in. It's rainy here and she gets tired when the barometer gets low.

vengeance applied

I think I posted on a verse about vengeance the other day. It came to me that I have a big situation where this scripture applies. I just got my wallet stolen at the YMCA in the locker room. This is very awful. I have to stop my credit card and because of the way I do things all buying has stopped until we get the new credit card. I am now about to go wait in awful lines at DPS to get a duplicate driver's license. What a mess! All my ID's were in that wallet.

I am very angry. I blame the YMCA. I suspect an inside job because someone had to cut a lock to get into my locker. The locker showed no signs of forced entry. Who but an employee would be able to do that without someone noticing? If it was not an employee then the security is very lax, criminally so. I will not go into all the details. But I am ready to sue. I am ready to make a stink. But God has brought me up short.

Instead I am calling on God to take vengeance on the perpetrators. I have had experience with this. I do know God will do it. It will not be as I would do it. God knows best. I cannot know all the facts. I probably would get angry at innocent people. And God knows how to do it in such a way that he gets the glory. I also pray for their souls, that they would repent of their sin. One hates to believe someone would sin against them. I do not know if I was singled out (probably) or whether it was random. One thinks one is a good person, not deserving of this.

Anyway "Vengeance is mine, says the LORD, I will repay." I am going to keep praying about this each time I have to replace an ID. There are quite a few.

I am reminded of another person that I am very angry at, the man who advises my wife about the affairs of her dead brother. I believe a lot of people, including the current bank officer, have taken advantage of her awfully. She does not agree. But I need to consign him to God and let it go. I do not need to continue to hold a grudge and think of ways to get him back. It is best if I leave it alone. He is a Christian too. Perhaps he thinks what he has done is perfectly fair.

I am reading "Friday the Rabbi Went Hungry". Early on one character says he thinks he never cheated anyone in business. You can ask anyone he says. Therefore, he thinks, God will take care of him. How many can say no one has ever felt cheated by my actions? I cannot. I know at least one family that got very angry at me for what I thought were very fair dealings. He probably went to God with his thought too. I am willing that God judge between the two of us. Rightly or wrongly they thought I cheated them. So when a businessman says he is convinced everyone thinks he is fair, he is making a fantastical boast.