Medicine of Immortality "It's a cold, and it's a broken, 'Hallelujah!'"

Prayer for Rachel’s grandmaPosted by Rick on February 15th, 2007

Also, while you are praying for Bob, please pray for Rachel’s grandma and our family. Her grandma is not doing very well after a recent surgery.

Bob updatePosted by Rick on February 15th, 2007

From Bob:

Just a few weeks ago I wrote about “living in two realities.” Many of
you responded that you would pray for us one day at a time, thanking
God for a good day and petitioning Him for a healed day on the
morrow.

Joanne and I have prayed this way daily—and God has been good to us,
one day at a time. However, things have become a bit unpredictable
recently and I have some “not so good days” in terms of increased
pain and feeling tired. Plus, my body seems to move like a tired,
old, rusty gate. I am scheduled for a test, MRI, this Friday to see
where things are at, nine weeks after leaving the hospital.

Please continue to pray for Divine intervention and complete healing
in spite of these recent changes. God has greatly helped Joanne’s
stomach, etc., so your prayers have already helped. I also doubt I’d
still be around were it not for all those prayers as there were many
moments when Joanne didn’t think I’d make it and I was too sick to
even realize it.

I’m acutely aware each day that, “For me to live is Christ, but to
die is gain.” Thank all of you, once again, for the outpouring of
your many prayers on our behalf. Words are inadequate and cannot
express the meaning your prayers, cards and emails hold for us. I
wish I could answer each one individually but thanks for not putting
that burden on me. Thanks again for respecting our privacy,
especially in the coming weeks, by not calling or stopping by.

We set aside February as the month to just be together, spend some
quality time that we’d expected to have together during my sabbatical
and to celebrate Valentine’s Day, maybe for the last time. [Of course,
I’ll honestly admit I’ve also done some writing too!]

We love the cards and emails if you want to communicate with us and
please continue to pray.

Love, Bob and Joanne

Snugglebunnies foreverPosted by Rachel on February 14th, 2007

Happy Valentine’s Day, Rick!

My wife is such a boob.Posted by Rick on February 13th, 2007

So yesterday my wife forced me to look at a web page devoted to women who are insecure about their breasts. So here’s yesterday’s quote of the day:

“Honey, 24 is about to start. I can look at breasts anytime.”

Thanks, Rachael, for almost making Rachel make me miss 24. I would have been angry. I let my night class out early…

What?Posted by Rachel on February 12th, 2007

This is how a typical conversation with Kyrie goes:

K: “Mama!”
Me: “What?”
K: “Mama!”
Me: “What?”
K: “deeda boo ah baby!”
Me: “Oh! That’s great!”

So today, I said, “Kyrie!” and she responds, “What?”

It was ridiculously adorable.

Race, movies, and a 9/11 heroPosted by Rick on February 11th, 2007

So Rachel and I are watching Extreme Home Makeover, and I immediately recognized the name of man whose family they were helping—Marine Sgt. Jason Thomas. Thomas is immortalized in the film “World Trade Center.” If you’ve seen the film, he is one of the two guys (along with Staff Sgt. Karnes) who save the main characters. He’s played by this guy. But the real Sgt. Thomas is black. Very black. Why does it hack me off so much that he is played by a white guy? Why would they make him a white guy in the film? Were there not enough black actors?

Update: This entry from wikipedia makes me feel better: “The producers of the World Trade Center movie tried unsuccessfully to locate Thomas. Not knowing that Thomas is black, they cast white actor William Mapother to play his role. Thomas didn’t know that the movie was about his and Dave Karnes’s story until he saw a TV commercial for the movie showing two Marines with flashlights, hunting for survivors atop the smoldering ruins at Ground Zero.”

Dr. Robert E. Webber updatePosted by Rachel on February 10th, 2007

Here’s the latest email from our dear friend, Bob, Please continue to pray for his healing and renewed strength:

Living Between two Realities

Once again, Joanne and I want to say a heartfelt thanks to all of you who have so faithfully and earnestly prayed for us. Thanks for the numerous emails and cards! We’ve been totally overwhelmed.

I’m now more than six weeks out from the day I was sent home from the hospital with my oncologist’s words echoing in my mind, “You have two to four weeks left to live.”

Since my last email I have been steadily improving, so much so that Joanne says, “The old Bob is back.” We have been asking ourselves, “how and what do you pray for” when you live in-between your doctor’s realism, “I’ve never had a pancreatic patient survive” and the experience of feeling that “God is healing me.”

So, how do you pray? I want to ask God to heal me but what if he already has. But, I’m also reluctant to be presumptuous and tell everyone I’ve been healed given the statistical downside of pancreatic cancer and the fact that we are foregoing any definite tests for now, like a MRI, CT scan or PET scan.

So, here is how we solved our dilemma. We live and pray one day at a time. We pray each day and say, “Thank you God for the healing you gave me today. Please heal me tomorrow.” It has occurred to both of us that if we were truly spiritually sensitive, we would have prayed that way all of our lives but it took the threat of imminent death to bring us to this point.

We cannot begin to tell all of you how we have benefited from your consistent prayers. We’re convinced that God is answering those prayers and that all the improvement thus far has come from God’s healing powers and that He is the source of all grace. I am confident that God sustained me today but I’m also painfully aware that I am “terminal,” at some point, in the larger sense of the word, as we all are. Thanks be to God that Jesus Christ has conquered sin and death and we all face a great future.

Please continue your prayers for both of us. Joanne will see her doctor and have some tests done as her stomach tension and discomfort continues. We think it’s “caregiver” stress but want to be sure. Also, although I’m better, my strength is fragile and I fatigue easily. Some days are better than others. We appreciate the way everyone has maintained our privacy and ask that you continue to do so.

I hope that you all know that the love and prayers you have “sent” our way are being returned to you from us. We are so deeply moved by them on our behalf.

The following is a quote I came across that seems to define our dual life as Christians and the “between two realities” phrase above:

“Our favorite distinction between the spiritual life and the practical life is false. We cannot divide them. One affects the other all the time; for we are creatures of sense and of spirit, and must live an amphibious life.”

Love,

Bob and Joanne

StylishPosted by Rachel on February 10th, 2007

Excuse the facial expression; she didn’t want to have her picture taken.
She insisted on wearing this today.

Yesterday it was 68 degrees. Pure bliss.Posted by Rachel on February 7th, 2007

Global Warming and ArmageddonPosted by Rick on February 5th, 2007

So I’ve enjoyed using a new book in my Persuasive Writing class this semester. The book stresses the importance of “They Say, I Say” arguments. As a springboard for a discussion of Aristotelian and Cicerian forms of rhetoric, we watched the film “An Inconvenient Truth” as an example of how to build an argument (Gore generally accepts an Aristotelian repudiation of gesture; I am borderline histrionic).

Anyway, of five or so essays that I’ve reviewed today, the They Say, I Say template has looked something like this:

Gore says global warming is going to kill us all.
I say these are just signs of the tribulation, and Jesus will rapture all the good Christians.

I just about gave a couple of students new sphincters for their irresponsible responses to Gore’s thesis (Okay, I wasn’t that mean; I just pointed out their hypocrisy when it comes to biblical ethics). Now, whether or not you agree with Gore is not the problem. But to say “I agree with Gore that global warming is eating our world, but I am not going to polish the brass of a sinking ship” is infuriating. Has the church truly become this ridiculous? Where do I live?

I’ve seen this attitude (sinking ship attitude) in eschatological debates with pre-trib premils like Dave Hunt and Tim LaHaye, but to see it so pervasive in college students just rips my knickers.