Showdown

There’s a story of a liberal Christian and a conservative Christian. They both felt their point of view was the best and that the other was missing the important issues. Nothing either said could change the other’s mind. One day they both died. The liberal went to heaven and said, “finally, the truth will be shown that I was right.” He settled into his mansion and then decided to check out the neighbors. He knocked on the door only to be totally shocked at who answered. It was the conservative. What’s he doing here and how could we be neighbors? They both went to God to see what was wrong and God said, “You’re both here because you accepted my grace and chose to live a life of love according to the knowledge that was given to you. Go in peace my children and enter in to the eternity that I have planned for you.”

There’s another story of a liberal Christian and a conservative Christian. They both felt their point of view was the best and that the other was missing the important issues. Nothing either said could change the other’s mind. One day they both died. The conservative went to hell and said, “where did I go wrong?” He wandered around and was surprised to see the liberal. I couldn’t have ended up the same place he did. They appealed to God and God said, “You’re both there because you failed to accept my grace and live a life of love according to the knowledge that was given to you.” With tears in his eyes he continued, “Enter in to the fires of eternal destruction.”

Hopefully the point of this parable is apparent beyond a discussion of heaven and hell. I have one more story. There are several ministry organizations on my college campus that for the longest time I have avoided because of things people in these groups have said about me and what I believe. I never knew what they did and I didn’t want to take the time to find out. Yesterday, a friend of mine invited me to go with one of these groups and so I said yes. They went to an apartment for the mentally and physically handicapped and put on a basic church service with lots of music and fellowship. The smiles on the faces of the residents said it all - This group was doing something awesome for the kingdom of God.

I discovered something that day. If you’re a liberal, I have some startling news. Sometimes conservatives are right and some of them are going to heaven, maybe even next door. If you’re a conservative, I have some startling news. Sometimes liberals are right and some of them are going to heaven, maybe even next door. People are always going to disagree but maybe I need to see if the disagreement is worth it. Sometimes it will be, but maybe sometimes God has a plan to break down some walls and do something amazing with ALL of us.

Last week

Because several people have asked, I'm posting about what happened to me last week.

It was Thursday morning at nursing clinicals. I had been sick for a couple of days so I wasn't feeling that great, but I was functioning. As the morning went on, a pain in my left shoulder began to develop and by noon became very noticeable. As I was breathing the pain was getting worse and I began to feel rubbing sensations in my left chest. I soon realized that I had had these symptoms before

A summer or two ago, I was sitting on a beach early in the morning and stood up only to have a very sharp pain in my left shoulder. I tried to walk back to my hotel room but quickly found myself very short of breath. It turned out that my left lung had randomly partially collapsed, medically what is called a spontaneous pneumothorax. I ended up spending a week and a half in the hospital with chest tubes and eventually had to have surgery to correct the problem.

I was hoping that this time the same thing wasn't happening, but I couldn't ignore it. On the way to my university's clinic, I felt more rubbing/bubbling sensations and a sharp increase in pain so that when I finally made it to the clinic, I couldn't take even a partial breath of air without it feeling like a knife was being placed in my shoulder. The clinic assessed me and then sent me off to get a chest x-ray which meant I had to drive to another clinic in Chattanooga. On my way there, something happened. I had an odd bubbling sensation and simultaneously all my pain and shortness of breath left. It took about five seconds to go from a knife stabbing to a state as if nothing had ever happened. When I finally got my chest xray, there was no evidence of anything. What happened on the way to the doctor's office I do not know but two weeks later, none of the symptoms have returned. Unless there's something I don't understand, a pneumothorax doesn't resolve that fast with no evidence.