"You don't do the right thing because of the consequences. If you're wise, you do it regardless of the consequences."

~Jeannette Rankin

Jasper Clinic research study

It's been 6 weeks since I've posted here...I'm assuming there's no one reading this any more. But I'll post this anyway. I'm spending this week at the Jasper Clinic in Kalamazoo (part of the Bronson hospital system) doing a clinical research study on a migraine medication. No, I don't have migraines...I'm here for the money. Plus it's a nice break from the normal daily stress, if you don't mind needles or rooming with strangers...which I don't.

If you do read this and check out Jasper Clinic and end up doing a study, please tell them I sent you so I can get a bonus. Thanks!

"This is the art of courage: to see things as they are and still believe that the victory lies not with those who avoid the bad, but with those who taste, in living awareness, every drop of the good."

~Victoria Lincoln

"Mere change is not growth. Growth is the synthesis of change and continuity, and where there is no continuity there is no growth."

~ They Asked For a Paper

Some of my favorite verses in Psalms:

Psalm 51: 10-12

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me from Your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

Psalm 103: 8-12

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever;
He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is His love for those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

We will miss you, Jeff

Jeffrey S. Gerwig, aged 40, of Grand Rapids, went to be with the Lord on Sunday, August 17, 2008, after a courageous battle with cancer. He was a loving husband and father. Jeffrey was a graduate of Ravenna High School and Ferris State University and an active member of his church. He was preceded in death by his grandparents, George and Mildred Gerwig; and grandmother, Phyllis McNitt. Surviving are his wife of 15 years, Jennifer; his sons, Bryan and Aaron; parents, Robert and Sally Gerwig; father-in-law and mother-in-law, William and Vickie Wakefield; grandparents, Claude and Ruth McNitt; his brothers, Monte (Amy) Gerwig, Todd (Irene) Gerwig, Rob (Rebekah) Gerwig; brothers-in-law, Shad (Baby) Wakefield, Adam (Suzanne) Wakefield; nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. The Funeral Service will be held 11:00 a.m. Friday, August 22, at Woodview Christian Church, 3785 Woodview S.W., with Rev. Jon Stradner officiating. Interment in McNitt Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be given to an Educational Fund for his sons.

Why?

Jared has recently introduced me to a new musical artist...Why? (specifically the CD "Alopecia"). Not something to which I would normally gravitate but I think my friend, Jack, would enjoy it...especially the poetry of it.

"Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that."

~ A Grief Observed

"The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the body [of Christ] encourages. ...Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality."

~ The Weight of Glory

"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."

~Johann Wolfgang Goethe

"Welcome, child," He said.
"Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."
''That is because you are older, little one," answered He.
"Not because you are?"
''I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

~ Prince Caspian

"But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you've taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."

The Case For Christianity (C.S. Lewis)

"Now we cannot discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good. Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder.
But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say,
'You must do this...I can't.'"

Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)

Press on...

Philippians 3:12-14

"Not that I have obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

"To look is one thing. To see what you look at is another. To understand what you see is a third. To learn from what you understand is still something else.
But to act on what you learn is all that really matters."

~Bits & Pieces

"Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do."

The Silver Chair

"All that is made seems planless to the darkened mind, because there are more plans than he looked for."

Perelandra

"Sometimes what you want to do has to fail so you won't."

~Marguerite Bro

Forgiveness

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

C.S. Lewis on Forgiveness (in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)

"Human beings judge one another by the external actions they see. God judges them by their moral choices. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. "

Mere Christianity

Happy Easter!

"Easter not only happened; it happens. It is not only a past event to be celebrated with new hats and hallelujahs; it is an eternally present fact to be appropriated by faith and obedience."

~Leonard Griffith

"It's the job that's never started that takes longest to finish."

~J. R. R. Tolkien

"I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits."

Mere Christianity

Word of the Day

fallible \FAL-uh-bul\, adjective:

1. Liable to make a mistake.

As in...

"But human beings are fallible. We know we all make mistakes."
-- Robert S. McNamara, "et al.", Argument Without End

Yup...that would be me. Human, through and through.

Brush with greatness

While watching Jeopardy, I learned that Galileo Galilei, the father of observational astronomy and father of modern experimental science, was born on Feb. 15, 1564...exactly 400 years before me. I'm going to consider that a good sign.

"It is a very funny thing that the sleepier you are, the longer you take about getting to bed; especially if you are lucky enough to have a fire in your room."


The Silver Chair

Faith engaging science and technology

(This is a fantastic article. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing, but this is at least a snapshot of what I wanted to share)

A pastoral letter by Rev. John H. Thomas
General Minister and President, United Church of Christ

"When we hear the cosmologists speak of how our
universe seems finely tuned in its fundamental properties
for the possibility of life, defying all the odds by being the
one universe capable of an earth full of living creatures,
we hear echoes of Genesis and of a universe created
with a purpose. Behind it all is a God who seeks our
companionship. Some look at this evidence of cosmic
fine tuning and say that there are many universes and
that of course, we live on the one that has life. Others
see cosmic fine-tuning as a hint that there is some sort of
creator behind it all.

For this reason, the word that we speak to this searching
and restless culture must be informed by science but
grounded deeply in faith. We believe in God, not in some
cosmic force or impersonal designer. We trust in a loving
Creator who is personal and relational, who seeks our
companionship, who comes as Christ incarnate in the
thick of things, and whose life-giving power permeates
the whole cosmos as the creative Spirit, calling us to
lives of gratitude in communities of justice. This great
and bounteous God has created us in the image of God’s
own inexhaustible mystery.

Confident in such unfailing goodness, we know we
can open ourselves and our theology to the momentous
conceptual changes of our times, finding in them new
occasions, new duties, and new language of praise. The
transformations of today’s scientific vision enrich our
faith, and our church honors our members who answer
God’s calling with careers in medicine, science, and
engineering. And we find ourselves strangely compelled
to explore the mysteries of the cosmos and unravel its
secrets, to dream of comprehending the whole, to ponder
its source and destiny and ultimate meaning, and by our
technology to transform nature itself. We are insatiably
curious, and our profound curiosity fuels equally the
venture of science and the quest of faith.

As a result, our universe has expanded and so has our
understanding of God. Our faith has nothing to do with
clinging to ancient misconceptions. Our faith is not in the
worldviews of ancient theologians, as majestic as these might have been. Our faith is in the living God, who always goes ahead of us, speaking, calling, and creating. Gone is the old view of a small, static universe, with fixed species dwelling on a
fixed earth. Gone is the old view of a small, static God.
We believe that God yearns for us to understand nature
more fully and to love it more deeply. God speaks in many
ways and through many voices. Today, one of God’s most
provocative voices is science. We listen and respond,
grateful that our theology is enriched by new ideas."

"Every one of us has in him a continent of undiscovered character.
Blessed is he who acts as the Columbus to his own soul."

~Unknown

(very) sweet 16

Happy Birthday, Laura!

"Snowflakes are some of nature's most fragile things, but just look what happens when they stick together."

~Unknown

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."

~Melody Beattie

For 2008...

To laugh often and much...
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...
To earn the appreciation of honest critics, endure the betrayal of false friends...
To appreciate beauty...
To find the best in others...
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition...
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived...

this is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For 2007...

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Feist

I really love this CD. It's not even mine...Erica's the one who got it for Christmas. Thanks, David, for getting it for her. I'll try to remember to share it with her once in a while.

"... Jill said, 'I bet we sleep well tonight,' for it had been a full day.
Which just shows how little anyone knows what is going to happen to them next."

The Silver Chair