bierkergaard

I promise that this is going to be my last posting on having a cold for awhile. Three blogs on it is enough. Misery loves company, to a point. Then I cry, and cry alone. Intriguing how proverbial adages conflict with another. Since I have been sick for the better part of two weeks, it has been on my mind. By God's grace, I am finally feeling better. Being ill certainly has taught me the gift of health. When I am healthy, it is easy to forget that I should be grateful for being well. Nothing is a given in this sad world and sickness is a reality for many. I was drawn to sermons about healing this past couple of weeks and one of the preachers addressed the text in Luke 17:17 where Jesus heals the ten lepers and only one returns to say thanks, and loudly at that. This enthusiastic proclamation of gratitude and appreciation is an interesting redemptive juxtaposition from what lepers had to shout when out in public in Israel/Judea of "Unclean" to those within 100 steps of...

Well, my cold has proven to be a worthy adversary...I am entering week two. Like a sequel to a Horror film. Actually, I am feeling better but it is too soon to pronounce deliverance. I did that on Saturday and was pulled back into the pit of illness like Gandalf and the monster into the abyss. Colds are like mosquitoes. Irritating, but not usually deadly (unless one lives in the developing world). Humbling, chastising, and frustrating. The relative ease of my life made more difficult. I checked this morning on the world's Misery-Meter . My cold put me in the top two billion of the most miserable people on earth today. We Westerners are such babies. We pull out a Kleenex and think ourselves Martyrs. Read a devotional from St. Chrysostom, a homily of his on Romans 12:2, this morning. Being one who wants to be transformed from sickness to health physically is a strong reminder that I should more earnestly seek spiritual transformation from the sickness of sin to the health of the Gos...

We are all familiar with the story of King Midas , the ruler who wished that all he would touch would turn to gold. And, it did. Including his beloved daughter. Then, he renounced his love of gold. Sometimes people have to lose before learning what should be really loved...and at least sometimes, unlike "a happy ever after" fairy tale, the loss is permanent and unrecoverable. With this fairy tale in mind, it is interesting/odd that a franchise car repair shop would name itself Midas. Fears of every repair turning into to avarice-acquired gold. Stories of oily-handed & greasy-hearted barely-graduated or high school drop-outs, seeking to even the score against the mechanically-inept white collar Honor class princes and princess, proliferated for years. A kind of micro-Marxian mechanical and monetary battle being fought in the trenches between the classes. The automobile, caught in a car custody battle, of sorts. On Saturday, I had a brief window of time to get my car wor...

Last week I encountered a coughing, sneezing, and wheezing Apple Store tech rep who was fixing my dead iPhone. He obviously was ill...retailers are not known for their generous sick day get paid policies. In order to get paid, I am sure that he has to show up. But, he planted the seeds that got me sick. And, I am a customer who now has a considerably less favorable feeling about the store and probably subconsciously will not want to go back there anytime soon. Just like when you get food poisoning off of a burrito. It takes a while before it gets back in the food rotation. It wasn't only the Apple employee's fault. I was pushing myself at work, cutting calories, shoveling a lot of snow, not getting enough sleep, and consuming too much caffeine, too. All factors in my demise. I was downloading the Cold App by my behavior. As a public school professional, I am allocated one paid sick day a month. Here is the kicker. In 20 years working, I have only used four days. In fact, today...

Keith Winder, a pastoral intern at our Church Wheatland Presbyterian, gave a sermon today titled "A Rejected Hometown Hero," an exposition on the implications on Luke 4:21-30. Nazareth was such a small town that many skeptics even doubt it existed in days of Jesus. That, then, in their eyes, casts doubt on the veracity of Scripture. So small and insignificant, not even on a map type of deal. Reminds me when I bought a low cost GPS App for my iPhone and it didn't have the map of Columbia, Pennsylvania. So, Nazareth was a small village...a one donkey town. That makes their hostility towards Jesus pretty pathetic, wanting to throw him off a cliff and all for proclaiming the Commencement of His Messianic reign. Provincial townies with wicked hearts (really all us, if I think about it). Jesus would and could have made them more...but they wanted to be less. He wanted to bring them heaven; they were happy in their little hell of a place. Small-minded souls spend more time t...