Hospital Cat Scams

I had to have a Cat Scan this week.  It’s no wonder health care costs are crazy high, when invariably, the first thing that’s recommended, when you’re sick, is an expensive test to scan you for cats.  The statistics are not readily available (surprise), but I suspect that fewer than one in ten thousand Cat Scans comes back positive.  Just because there’s a machine that can do it doesn’t mean it should be done.  This is a perfect example of big medical corporations marketing products that hospitals don’t really need.  All an aggressive salesperson had to do was convince one hospital administrator to invest a few hundred grand (which, I understand, a hospital can make from one day’s mark-up on Acetaminophen) for the “latest technology,” and every other hospital had to follow suit.  No hospital wanted to be the only one in town without a fancy new Cat Scanning device.  Did any administrator pause to ask, “How in the world would the cat get in there in the first place?”---Evidently not.  Now that universities have cracked down on fraternity cat-gulping parties, abdominal cat diagnoses are actually relatively rare.  Are we supposed to believe that thousands of kittens are wandering into their owner’s open mouths at night, attracted by their snoring?   I know kittens are curious, but that sounds a bit far-fetched.

Foxes and Beavers and Owls, Oh My.

We’ve been told since we were children that foxes are sly.  But I’ve seen quite a few of them dead in the road recently.  I can only assume they’re having some unpleasant interactions with fast moving vehicles.  I don’t know about you, but it strikes me as not particularly sly to run directly across the path of a car or truck hurtling down a highway.  

“Hey, Ralph.  How much you wanna bet I can get to the other side of the smooth trail before that next giant monster runs by?” 

“You mean that big one with the round black feet and the fire-eyes that’s coming incredibly fast?  I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Sly. Why don’t you just wait until he goes by?  Remember Cousin Wily tried the same thing last week and—Sly?  SLY!

Even people generally regarded as, shall we say—not particularly sly—seldom try to outrun cars and trucks.  If they did, there would be a severe pastor shortage, and perhaps Pretty Boy would be known as Pretty-Banged-up-Humphrey. 

Now someone may respond (let’s call him Melvin),

“This is simply nature’s way of weeding out the foxes that don’t deserve the sly label—in other words, a way of protecting the brand.  The vast majority of foxes are clever enough to wait until the monster passes before crossing the street.  The ones you see flattened are the few, the proud, the non-sly.”  

Though it be Madness

My watch battery died.  Now I have to advance the minute hand manually.  It pretty much takes up my whole day.  This has given me a greater appreciation for people in the old days, before there were time-savers like batteries.  It’s no wonder it took them forever to get anything done, like, inventing batteries.  For example, it has taken me twenty-two minutes just to write the above, taking a break every fifty-five seconds to advance my watch.  Of course moving the minute hand only takes about five seconds.  The time-consuming part is counting “one Mississippi,” “two Mississippi,” etc., until I get to “fifty-five Mississippi,” over and over again.  (The only thing worse might be typing “one Mississippi,” “two Mississippi,” etc.  By the way, I don’t know that I’ve ever been to Mississippi, but the scuttlebutt seems to be, one Mississippi is more than enough, and fifty-five Mississippies would be way too many---But this is getting us off track, or it would be if we had some sort of track, and if we were on it.)  

Dead Men Walking

According to God's Word, there are people who have died who are now walking around on earth. In fact, you might have one or two in your home right now. What's that sound in the basement? Some might call them zombies, and some might call them other scary names, like Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists or scariest of all, Presbyterians.  Listen to this 6 minute segment of a sermon on 2 Corinthians 5, if you dare.

Cryptic Sayings

Living next door to a funeral home tends to remind one of his mortality.  So it’s going to be embarrassing if, after over nine years of such reminders, I kick the proverbial bucket without clarifying some things regarding my departure.  First, as I’ve mentioned to my lovely wife Darla numerous times, and in my previous article, Between the Quick and the Dead, I don’t want to be exhibited, as if I were a science project, or a blue fin tuna.   My body never looked especially good when I was alive; I have no reason to think it will look better when I’m dead.  Why would I want my friends and family gawking at my carcass?  I never gawked at theirs.  Who came up with the open casket idea anyway?  How much do you want to bet it was a self-satisfied embalmer?   If one of you Wry Bread readers should happen to find me displayed in such a manner, I hope you will have the decency to close the box, or at least flip me over.  If people must gawk at me, I’d rather they do it behind my back.  

Monkey Madness

I remember hearing several years ago that a few drivers in Virginia reported their vehicles had been struck by crab apples thrown by a band of roaming monkeys.  It was either that, or it was a band of roaming crabs throwing apples at Virginia monkeys.  I’m almost certain there were monkeys involved, and Virginia.  Anticipating that some (myself included) would doubt my memory on this, I have taken the liberty of exhuming the story, as told by Virginia State Trooper Mike Scott to an AP reporter.  I shall quote the gist of it for your reading pleasure.  There is even a bonus banana in the story, to which I have not yet alluded, because I had no recollection of it. 

Treadmills and Timbuktu

Last Christmas, my lovely wife, Darla and I decided to buy a gift that would benefit us both.  I rejected her first idea, which was a one-way ticket for me to Timbuktu, on the grounds that it was unclear exactly how such a trip would benefit me.  Her second idea, rejected for similar reasons, involved Nome, Alaska.  Eventually we came up with something we could agree on.  We decided to buy a treadmill.  The thinking was, she could use it for hanging wet sweaters that she didn’t want to put in the dryer, and I could benefit from the mental gymnastics of figuring out how in the world to get the monstrous thing into the house.

 

We did not run out and buy the first treadmill we could find, primarily because, at this advanced stage of life, commonly known as the pre-death stage, we do not run. That’s another reason I agreed to buy a treadmill.  Should the impulse to run ever strike me, I didn’t want to have to run outside, where children might point at me and say,

 

“Look, Mommy, Santa is wearing shorts and trying to run.  I can see his bowl full of jelly.”  A lump of coal is too good for such a child.

Time Thieves

Daylight Savings Time is misnamed.  They should call it Sleep Losing Time.  It seems like The Central League of Clock Keepers of America (CLOCKsA) always picks the least convenient time to make us turn our clocks back----Sunday mornings at 2 AM.  In other words, they pick a time when they know---or should know, that most law-abiding citizens are fast asleep, and a number of us have to get up and preach in the morning. They’re always telling us what to do with our time, and our clocks.  Would it be so hard for them to move the clock adjustment time forward or backward a few hours?   Why couldn't they tell us to jump from ten to eleven, or eleven to ten?  Every six months or so, when I have to set my alarm for 2, just so I can crawl out of bed and stumble around the house resetting our clocks, I wish I had someone from CLOCKsA on hand.  

My "60 Minutes" Interview

I don’t recall having volunteered to single-handedly prevent America’s forest fires.  I’m willing to do my part, of course, as I care about Bambi, Thumper and their woodsy friends as much as the next guy raised on Disney movies.  But as I told my church family, I was somewhat taken aback recently when a rather official-looking giant bear with a shovel told me that of all the people in America, I’m the only one who can prevent forest fires.  Granted, there is some satisfaction in being recognized among my peers, and to be honest, it doesn’t come as a complete surprise.  But I would have guessed that the national acclaim I so richly deserve would have come for being an excellent driver.  I’ve always half-expected that one day an officer would pull me over to commend me for coming to a complete stop before making a right hand turn at a red light, or for being one of the few Americans who knows the order in which to proceed at a four-way stop sign. 

An Accounting of the Free Treasure

Why would a King, in an act of mercy, sovereignly pardon a criminal sentenced to death, and entrust to him an inestimable and inexhaustible treasure, with instructions to freely give it away? Why would he not, instead, entrust it to mighty messengers from his court?  How might some respond to the offer of such a free gift? How might the king react if the pardoned criminal did not offer the treasure to others, but kept it all for himself?

The Mouse That Roared

When I was a child, our family received a wonderful present every year from Dad’s sister in London, an aunt we children had never met.  A week or two before Christmas, something remarkable would happen.  A box full of luscious Belgian chocolates would travel all the way across the ocean, the same ocean, I was assured, that we’d go swimming in each summer, and that box would magically land at our door in NE Baltimore.  Somehow, my dad’s sister had access to the world’s best chocolates. These chocolates were related  to the Milky Way and Three Musketeer bars on our drug store shelves, in the same way that Baltimore’s jumbo lump crab cakes are related to the frozen hockey puck-like objects that Mrs. Paul sells---that is, in name only.  Aunt Money’s boxes included orange flavored bars, and strawberry flavored bars, white chocolates and dark chocolates, chocolates shaped like sea shells and chocolates shaped like tiny pyramids.

My Kindergarten Teachers

People tell me they remember their kindergarten teacher, and kindergarten friends.  I have no recollection of kindergarten at all. This used to trouble me until my parents let it slip that I didn’t go to kindergarten.  Apparently you had to be five years old by the start of classes to attend kindergarten, and I didn’t turn five until November, so I missed the cut.  The next year they tried to enroll me in first grade, but the school told them that I had to be six, and unfortunately, my birthday fell in November again that year. Something similar happened the next year when they tried to enroll me in second grade.  By the time my parents realized this was going to be a recurrent problem, I was 14, and too old to start school, so they my only vocational option was something that didn’t require an education.  That narrowed my career choice down to scarecrow or pastor.   Given the honor afforded the one job over the other, the choice was easy.  Before long, however, the crows lost their fear of me, and I entered the ministry. 

Who Can See Better?

Who Can See Better - those who can only see the transitory things of this world, things which are fading away and will soon be no more, or those who can also see the things which are spiritual and remain forever? Do you look forward to coming days on earth only, or that day when you will see God face to face? Can you see better when you are young and your eyes work well, or when you are old, and your eyes are failing, when you have been weaned from the milk of human kindness and long for the wine of heavenly joy?

Strolling Down My Memory Lame

I don’t often talk about it, but my birth was a traumatic experience.  The day began uneventfully; I slept late, as was my practice in those lazy months, with no plans other than the usual---a bit of thumb-sucking, some stretching, kicking, napping and skinny-dipping in what I thought was my own private pool.  (My friend Tommy Humphrey would interject here, “That’s pretty much your current schedule, isn’t it, Rusty?” To which I would respond, “Write your own stories, Pretty Boy.”)  That particular November day I was utterly content, and reflecting on my idyllic situation, when my world was quite suddenly turned upside down.  Thrust into a dark tunnel for no apparent reason, I was unceremoniously squeezed and shoved for what seemed like hours, from time to time hearing the cries of the mystery woman whose voice, over the previous months, had become so familiar to me. 

Biting the Screen that Feeds You

I grew up watching TV---Robin Hood, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Sky King, Superman, to name a few, and tons of westerns: Roy Rogers, Hop-a-long Cassidy, Maverick, Cheyenne, Gunsmoke, Have Gun-Will Travel, The Rifleman, and my favorite, The Lone Ranger.  I think I was twelve years old before I met any three-dimensional people.  In my TV world, I knew that if I fell in a well, there would always be a collie nearby to summon help; if bad guys robbed my wagon train and left me hog-tied, a masked stranger and his trusty Indian companion would come along and make things right; and if I ate all the cream-filled chocolate eggs I was supposed to sell for school, my older brother Wally would somehow get me out of the jam, and ask Mom and Dad to not be too hard on me, because I was just a goofy kid.

Mother Country Syndrome

Most Americans love Britain. She is, after all, our mother country, and how can you not love your mother? That’s why America ground to a halt when we heard the news about Lady Di, and why we were glued to our satellites when Kate Middleton married Prince What’s-His-Name. I believe the technical term for this is Mother-Country Syndrome (MCS). As unpopular as it may be to say it, perhaps our love for Britain causes us to overlook some important things.

Here in rural Maryland, for example, lots of people have been diagnosed with Lyme disease, which we are told comes from ticks. I’m not so sure. I’ve noticed that some of those who contract it are indoor types who work in offices and live in homes that are generally tick-free. Besides, it’s called Lyme disease, not Tick disease. Surely I’m not the only one to notice that lyme is obviously a British spelling of lime. We don’t need Miss Marple or Inspector Lewis to deduce that America’s outbreak of Lyme disease can be traced to infected British fruit. Was it just coincidental that America’s first reported incidents were in New England?

Count Your Children

My parents had piled the kids in the Plymouth station wagon and we were on the first leg of a long vacation trip, no doubt headed to a beach, with Dad driving late at night.  The back seats had been folded down, and the five kids were lined up like logs on blankets, trying to sleep.  Somewhere along the line, Dad stopped for gas.  Later, when he came to a toll booth, the attendant said, “Count your children.”

“What?”

“Count your children.”  

Dad turned around.  “Ricky, Russy, Kenny, Dindy…Wait!  Where’s Dougy?”  

Field of Nightmares

The summer after I completed sixth grade (yes, Pretty Boy, I completed sixth grade, and I resent the question) my family moved from Maryland to central Florida.  (And yes, they brought me with them.  One more question like that and I might just stop answering you.)  The move was exciting, although I was concerned about being so far away from the Orioles. One of the first things that my younger brother Kenny and I did that summer was look for a place to play ball.  Until we found a vacant field, we played catch on the lawn of the Lake Dot Motel in Orlando, where the family stayed until we moved into a rental house in Winter Park. 

By the way, the Lake Dot Motel was (and perhaps is again) a lovely peaceful oasis.  But it wasn't very peaceful when the Sukhia boys arrived with bags of firecrackers and cherry bombs.  We had finagled them from a fellow named Pedro a few days before at his establishment that he called South of the Border, by shrewdly trading for them American paper money.  If he knew that cherry bombs exploded even under water, Pedro would never have parted with them for a few gringo dollars.  Let's hope the fish population in Lake Dot has recovered from the Disaster of '62.

Getting back to baseball---as it happened, the Lutheran church our family began to attend in Winter Park had a pastor who had once been a Minor League player (in the Pirate organization, as I recall) and he conducted a baseball camp in South Carolina.  I spent two glorious weeks there---sliding pits, batting cages, individualized instruction, movies of old World Series games at night, and grits at every meal.  I think Kenny got homesick and left after the first week, or else he came up just for the second week.  For the facts, you’ll have to consult his future blog, Littler Loaves.   

That camp was the scene of one of the greatest embarrassments that a 12 year old could endure.  On the final day, when the parents came to pick up their kids, there was a father-son game. 

Rusty Wonders Some More

Last week, for the first time, on a whim, I stopped at a nearby farm with a large sign reading, “Pick Your Own Strawberries,” but it was a scam.  As I had long suspected (and this is why I never stopped before), when I got in the field, there was absolutely no way to tell which strawberries were my own---they all looked pretty much the same.  Now I’m wondering how many quarts of berries that were rightfully mine have never gotten to me over the years, simply because they were not clearly designated.  So the question is---who’s been eating all my berries? 

I was still wondering about that when I drove by a fancy residential street with a sign, “No Outlet.” My curiosity was piqued.  By the way, if you pay any attention to curiosity, you will note that it is more often piqued than it is anything else.  For every time curiosity is alarmed or embarrassed or squelched, it is piqued a dozen times or more. 

Guess Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but when I was about ten years old, a wolf would come to my bedside at night.  He wasn’t the sort of wolf that howls at the moon and travels in packs.  He was the sort of wolf that walks upright on his hind legs, with a long snout and a dangling tongue dripping saliva.  In other words, he was the type that would occasionally get bit parts in Disney cartoons.   He didn’t watch me from my closet, or from across the room.  He would come right up to my head, sit on his haunches so he was at eye-level, and stare at me.  What particular interest he had in me, I did not know, and he would not say; but I guessed it was the same interest that Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother with the big teeth had in her; which happened to be the same interest that the huffing  puffing pursuer of the three little pigs had in them. 

Dougy's Big Adventure

When we were kids, in the fifties (yes, I mean the nineteen-fifties) our parents used to say that my brother Doug was accident-prone.   What they meant was, he had a defective warning light.   In normal children, as you know, that light blinks in their brain just before they do something like jump from a moving vehicle, dive in an unfamiliar body of water, climb a rusty water tower, or otherwise endanger life or limb.  Doug’s warning light had evidently shorted-out in some dirty pond.

Our home in the NE Baltimore area called Overlea was on Powell Avenue, a dead end street, and we lived at the end of the dead part.  I know it sounds weird that a dead end street would be called an avenue, but I don’t make the rules, although, of course, I should.   Today our street would be described as a cul-de-sac, but this was back before America purchased the word cul-de-sac from the people of France.  I understand we got it for just $300 billion and Euro-Disney.  This is a lot more than we paid for the word chauffeur, picked up just before the war for next to nothing; but it’s quite a bit less than we paid for the word carte blanche, for which, I was told, we gave the French a veritable blank check. 

The Impossible Mission

When I was in high school in central Florida in the sixties, the Mission Impossible TV show was popular.   In the unlikely event that you aren’t aware of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), it was (or is) a secret band of government agents---so secret in fact, that if they were killed or captured, “the Secretary” would actually “disavow any knowledge of their actions.”  We were never quite sure who this secretary was, or why it would be such a big deal if she said she didn’t know what these guys were up to.  Now that I have a secretary, I understand how implausible it would be for one to claim no knowledge of her boss’ actions.  The secretary normally gets blamed for her boss’ screw ups.

 
Each member of the IMF was picked for his expertise in deactivating bombs, breaking into impregnable fortresses, or changing his appearance and voice so dramatically that he could trick a bad guy into thinking he was the bad guy’s mother.  This one came in handy.  Whenever they were out of ideas for how to stop a nasty foreign agent from detonating a nuclear weapon and starting the war to end all worlds, his mother would pop into his apartment, and he would casually mention to her, over lasagna, where he hid the bomb.  Then Mom would pull off her mask, the walls of his apartment would fall down, and the bad guy would discover that he was actually in the back of a truck on the way to a federal prison. 

Rest Room Break

 I've been in quite a few Men’s Rooms in my time, and I have gained some insights that may be of particular interest to about  half of our readers---I’m thinking of those who don’t frequent Men’s Rooms.

   Only three out of five Men’s Rooms provide soap. 

 If you factor in what gas stations call Men’s Rooms to the above, that number falls to 1 in  5.      

• Only four out of five Men’s Rooms provide hot water.  
• If a Men’s Room has a paper hand towel dispenser, it is safe to assume it is empty.
• If there is a hot-air electric hand drier on the wall with the words “press button” on it, someone has scratched out the letters o and n. 
• I suspect the above may be traced to one energetic jokester who has made it his life’s work.  

Is God Sovereign?

Did God, who created all things, simply set His creation in motion through the use of natural laws, or has he been actively and sovereignly engaged in the outcome of all events great and small?

Rusty Wonders

Some things cause me to wonder.  For example, the little box of dye that temporarily turns gray beards back to their original brown or black is called Just for Men.  They print it prominently on the front of the box.  I can’t imagine why they would do that, other than to prevent women from using it to dye their beards.  “Keep away, ladies, this beard dye is just for men.  You women will have to get your own.”  

I wonder how many husbands have heard their wives say something like:  “Honey, have you noticed how my beard has been slowly turning gray over the years?  I sure wish I could put some of your dye on it; you know, to bring back the natural brown I had when we married, but the box says it’s Just for Men.”   

“You don’t need that, dear.  I like your beard with the gray.  It’s distinguished looking, and the gray goes especially well with your blue lipstick.  It gives your face that Civil War Reenactment look.”

Ica-russ Epilogue

I know some of you have been waiting with bated breath for this third and final installment of the Ica-Russ saga.  I’m not clear about just what bated breath is, but I’m pretty sure the phrase refers to the sort of breathing one does when in high anxiety in anticipation of something.  Give me a second to see if my computer can clarify this...Well, that’s what I thought:  “with bated breath--in anxious or excited anticipation.”  But I still don’t know why those words mean that.  Breath I get, but bated?  Here’s something, “Bate (intransitive verb), beat wings…to beat the wings wildly or impatiently in an attempt to fly off a perch or a falconer’s fist when still attached by a leash.”   That helps a little, but I would still not use bated in any sentence in which it is not immediately followed by the word breath. 

The Seed of the Church

Can the enemies of the Gospel prevent it from spreading by the sword?  How has persecution affected the Church of Christ over the centuries?

To view the entire sermon click on this link- http://youtu.be/CVRHT3cFXjE

God Overrules

Where was God when ...? Why did God permit this horrible tragedy? God has wise and holy ends to accomplish by allowing evil to take place. When bad things happen as a result of man's sin (sin for which man is responsible) God overrules them for his own purposes.

Ica-russ Falls (or Ica-russ Rises,The Sequel)

We were on the ground, but we were still flying high.  We had soared over our school, dropped our cargo, and at least one of the precious Sukhia for President pillows had been found and retrieved (ironically, by the one classmate of whose vote I felt assured, the one who is sitting next to me as I type this, 45 years later). The mission had been a success.  It would be the talk of the school the next day; now, if we could just get through the next 48 hours or so without any nasty consequences...

It was History class, on the morning after our triumph; a fitting class for an event to occur that would put an end to what might have been a historic political career.  It was a day that will live in infamy in the annals of-----that will go down in the record of------a day that will forever be memorialized in-----well, in point of fact, there are no annals or records of such things, but if there were, then what I’m about to tell you would be in them. Oh yes, it would assuredly be in them.  

Legalism or Liberty?

There are many ways we can fall into bondage when we've been granted liberty. We can fall into the trap of trying to earn our salvation by our good performance. We can follow unfairly imposed, extra-biblical rules, out of fear that if we don't, we will be judged a bad Christian, or no Christian. In this video clip, Pastor Russ discusses the bondage of legalism and the liberty of conscience.

6 minutes 29 seconds

To watch "Blinded But Seeing," the entire sermon from which this video was extracted, 

click here!

To hear the entire sermon click here

________________________________________________________________

From Little Loaves, the blogging fellowship of Pastor Russ Sukhia. All rights reserved. Website:http://littleloaves.blogspot.com/ | Phone: 410.655.5466

Flying High: Ica-russ Rises

It has occurred to me that I may have an inexhaustible supply of material for Wry Bread, as pandas can wander into my mind’s kitchen anytime they wish.  But as far as the things which actually happened to me are concerned, I have only limited time to recount them before my neurons, which are already slowing down, stop firing altogether. (Maybe if I had been using high test gas in my various Speck-mobiles all these years, my brain would be running cleaner). So while I still can, I will attempt to recount the story that was, as a sixteen year old, my brief claim to fame. This much I remember:

The year was 1967.  I was a junior at Lyman High School in Longwood, Florida, and it was time to elect class officers for our senior year.  “Who better than I to be class president?” I thought (and I tended to put my thoughts in quotations back then).  “If not me---who?  If not now---when?”  The reason I decided to throw my proverbial hat into the proverbial ring, was not because I had any serious thoughts about how to improve our proverbial school, or benefit my proverbial classmates.  My sole thought was decidedly non-serious and un-proverbial.  “Wouldn’t it be cool to be class president?” 

The Indestructible World Trade Center

On the hill of Calvary stands an everlasting exchange. The Gospel proclaimed by Pastor Russ on 9/11/2011.

3 minutes 49 seconds

To watch "Who's in Charge Here?," the entire sermon from which this video was extracted, 

click here!

To hear the entire sermon click here

________________________________________________________________

From Little Loaves, the blogging fellowship of Pastor Russ Sukhia. All rights reserved. Website:http://littleloaves.blogspot.com/ | Phone: 410.655.5466

Tater Tales

My first conversation with Tater was by phone.  I can’t say for sure that there was a piece of straw in his teeth, or a wad of tobacco in his mouth, but I’m pretty sure he was in a rocker on his front porch, and there was a lazy hound dog close enough to hit with a projectile.  

We had just moved from Florida to the lovely town of Maryville, Tennessee, in the foothills of the Smokies, with our son Nathan, 13, and daughter Grace, almost 12.  I had spotted a cute little log home nestled in some trees, within a mile of the church grounds.  My thinking was, “We’re in Tennessee now.  We should live in a log home, as Lincoln would have done, if he had lived in Tennessee.”  The family could hardly argue with that logic.  The house I liked was vacant, so I left a note, asking if I could have it.  The owners, Kirk and Gail (to protect their identity, we’ll call them Dirk and Dale) who became friends and members of our church, called several weeks later to say they were planning on moving into the home soon; so no, I couldn’t have it, but they would put us in touch with the builder, a fellow named Tater.

“Sure, Bud.  I kin bild you a house.  You find yerself a lot, I’ll buy the lot an build the house an you kin git a loan from the bank fer the hole amownt and buy it from me.”  

A Blinding Enemy

If you were walking along a beach and you saw the words, "Earl loves Joann," written in the sand, it would be possible for you to conclude that the writing was caused, not by an intelligent being, but by the natural forces of wind and waves, snails and crabs.  But would that be a reasonable conclusion from the evidence?

6 minutes 31 seconds
To watch "Blinded But Seeing," the entire sermon from which this video was extracted, 
click here!

To hear the entire sermon click here

________________________________________________________________

From Little Loaves, the blogging fellowship of Pastor Russ Sukhia. All rights reserved. Website:http://littleloaves.blogspot.com/ | Phone: 410.655.5466

Between the Quick and the Dead

As the members of our church are aware, our home is nestled between a high school to our west and a funeral home to our east; and as most of them have heard me say, “It’s like living in the middle of the Apostles’ Creed------between the quick and the dead.”  Some think that once I had the line, I had no choice but to buy the house, but that’s not quite how it happened. 

We had the good fortune of moving to Maryland, one of the most expensive states in which to live, at the end of 2004, one of the most expensive times to move here.  But we didn’t want to make any rash housing decisions, so the church graciously allowed us to stay in their Mission Home as we searched for several months for a place of our own.  That way, as it turned out, we were eventually able to buy at the very peak of the market, when houses were going for more than the sellers were asking for them. 

Back then, as some of you will remember, when there was more than one offer for a home, the owner would have the competing buyers clash in various contests of strength and endurance.  Having lost three jousts (strength) and having failed at the endurance test (one complete viewing of an Adam Sandler movie), we resigned ourselves to buying a house that no one else was bidding on; or to put it in a way that you English majors can tolerate, we resigned ourselves to buying a house on which no one else was bidding. This meant we were able to buy a home we weren’t crazy about, in a location we didn’t care for, with a huge yard we didn’t need, much farther from our church than we wanted, and we only had to pay about twice the amount we ever had to pay for any other home.  In retrospect, I might say, that plan seems ill-conceived. The good news is the value of our home has now fallen to the point that we could much more easily purchase it if we hadn’t done so already. 

Intelligent Design

This clip describes a process that is presently underway to simulate, with an IBM super-computer, the functions of a human brain.  [Note: The IEEE to which Russ refers is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers]

To hear the entire sermon click here ________________________________________________________________

From Little Loaves, the blogging fellowship of Pastor Russ Sukhia. All rights reserved. Website:http://littleloaves.blogspot.com/ | Phone: 410.655.5466

Luther's Prayer

Are there times when you feel like a failure as a Christian because you doubt, fear, you are weary, or even feel as if God is not listening and has abandoned you? You aren't alone. On occasion, even heroes of the faith have felt this way. Listen to Luther's prayer the night before he refused to recant his writings before the leaders of church and state.

What, More Bears?

OK, full disclosure:  There is a sense in which it could be said that not everything in the story of my “panda pandemic” happened precisely as I described it; in the sense that maybe I didn’t find a panda chewing on our kitchen’s bamboo floor, and in the sense that maybe our kitchen doesn’t have a bamboo floor.  But I steadfastly stand by my account of our having a kitchen, and the rest of the story happened pretty much just the way I imagined it.  The following bear story however, has some basis in fact.

When we lived in east Tennessee, my brother Doug and his wife Nancy came to visit us. (That we once lived in east Tennessee, that I have a brother, Doug, and that he has a wife, Nancy, could all be independently verified by a reliable source, if you could find one; so far so good.)  When out-of-staters come to the Smokies, locals often take them on the Cades Cove Loop, a long slow drive past the remains of the original homesteads of mountain settlers, situated in the southwestern stretches of the Smoky Mountain National Park.   Before their land was purchased (or confiscated) so we could drive through it and admire it, folks used to farm, worship, get wed and get buried in those parts, often in that order.  (I noticed, walking through their preserved log homes, that those early settlers were also accomplished graffiti artists.) 

One of the attractions of the cove is the wildlife, much of which would be better called tame-life, because they’ve grown accustomed to being photographed by Yankees wearing Red Sox caps. I suppose someone, at some point, may have driven along the loop road without seeing any deer, but that person would have to be legally blind, and shouldn’t be driving. 

From time to time, however, black bears are sighted along the loop, and when it happens, people tend to pull over to watch them.  On this particular day, as I recall, Doug and Nancy were in the front seat and Donna and I were in the back.  Presumably we took Doug’s car because he and Nancy didn’t want to be crammed into the back of whatever miniature car we owned at the time (the youth at our church christened one of my fifty-mpg cars The Speck.  Sometimes they would move it from my parking spot without bothering to start it.  I think I found it once in a church closet).  The cars ahead of us had pulled over, and I knew this probably meant that there was a black bear ahead.  I asked Nancy to hand me her camera, and I hopped out of the car and hurried to the spot where some tourists had gathered in the nearby woods.

Arminians in Heaven?

 

You may be surprised to find, in heaven, positions of honor occupied by Christians who on earth were members of denominations whose doctrine was lightly esteemed by you.

The Panda Pandemic

I wouldn’t call myself a coward, necessarily. Let’s just say I’m careful.  For example, as I’ve acknowledged publicly, even though I’ve spent a good portion of my life in Florida, I’ve never been scuba-diving, because I have O-positive blood; I’m a universal donor. This means, as I understand it, I can be eaten by a shark of any blood type. 

The same goes for bears, so I see no reason to needlessly attract them, which is why I’d rather not live in a house with a den, and I refuse to grill salmon outside. Why live dangerously? 

Unfortunately, these precautions have not succeeded in keeping our home entirely bear-free. Trying to do our part for the planet, when we needed a new kitchen floor, we chose bamboo, because it grows so fast. It was fast growing alright; within a week it had spread into our dining room. Worse, I came into the kitchen one morning to find a panda gnawing on my floor (at that moment I regretted not reading the small print that came with the bamboo). 

Salesmen and Suckers

Multi-million dollar "parsonages," private jets, paid family "ministry staff," Bentleys and Rolls Royces, these are the trappings of some of America's most popular pastors and evangelists. The Scripture warns us of those who will use the gospel as a means of personal gain.  Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for "devouring widows' houses."  What would He say to these modern scoundrels?

The Veil

The law God revealed to Moses was glorious.  So much so, that  when  Moses descended Mt. Sinai with the tablets of the law, his face was radiant.  But Paul calls that glorious law a "ministry of death," because it could only reveal our sin.  It had no power to remove it.  That glorious law pales in comparison to the gospel, as the light of a candle fades in the light of the sun.  The gospel not only shows us the way of life, it carries with it, when anointed by God's Spirit, the power to make us alive. The glory of the law is properly understood by those who have been driven by it to the much more glorious Messiah; and when one turns to the Lord Jesus Christ, the veil is taken away.

 

10 minutes 20 seconds
To watch "A More Glorious Ministry," the entire sermon from which this video was extracted, click here! http://youtu.be/jCqiwThudUA