If you are like me you make sure the next book you pick up is worth your time reading it. I’ve found that searching the best-seller Kindle lists is helpful for finding worthy texts. That is how I came across Jared Diamond’s, “Guns, Germs and Steel,” a 1997 Pulitzer Prize winner. Diamond is a University…
Category Archives: Spirituality
Something new, and old
It has been almost two months since I last posted. After writing about 100 blogs over a three-year span, I believe I had run out of things to say, and I didn’t want to keep re-writing the same stories and themes. Frankly, I’m surprised that anyone would want to read this blog . . ….
Rebuilding
One of our patients is a former con-man. Over 3 decades he cheated business partners and friends. In the Old West he would have been called a swindler. If you ask him, he was a successful con-man, and the most miserable person in the world. That was his situation until the Creator reached down into…
No regrets
A friend of mine from college posted on his Facebook page a few thoughts about regrets. Here they are: “I always hear people say, “I live my life with no regrets” or “I have no regrets in life.” Really?! Not one. I have tons. Practically every conversation I have, I later think, “why did I…
Love your neighbor
Jesus’ words to us came to mind when I first heard about one of our patients who had recently come on our hospice service. Her neighbors called us asking for help in taking care of her. We discovered that the neighbors had made a promise to the woman’s late husband, a wonderful guy, beloved by…
He can’t take His eyes off us
I was reading a book about a man who was the primary caretaker for his father. His dad had been a robust, hard-working man his whole life, and cancer had reduced his physical body to a bed-bound status, hardly able to feed himself. Each night, the exhausted son would feed his dad and then massage…
The three of us
They grew up in a little town south of Midlothian, Texas, braving the depression but not knowing there was anything better. Their grandfather who had been a Civil War soldier inherited some land there and named the town after his wife. They are all three still living here just outside of Fort Worth. The “baby”…
Man Knows Not His Time
We often receive requests from family members and hospice patients to know how much longer they have to live. My response is always the same, that only the Giver of life knows when it will be taken away. Although our hospice patient population is mostly elderly, our census has been peppered with more than the…
Starbucks and hospice
I’ve had some difficulty these past two months with blog writing. It feels like I have exhausted anything I would say that is worth saying. As if I could write more, but it would be primarily re-stating what I’ve written numerous times. That sense changed this week after several people mentioned to me that they…
Kibera
During my Kenya mission trip last month I noticed that Good Friday was also Earth Day. Good Friday evokes our immeasurable need for salvation, and Earth Day connotates are ability to save the world. Those are two very different concepts that have opposing understandings of who we are as human beings. That discussion reminds me…
