Steady On [10'TU]

I settle in to type, attempting to be normal while my forearm still aches from the healing injury. As I mentioned earlier, some 6 weeks ago I ruptured the tendon connecting my right bicep to my forearm. Five weeks ago today I underwent surgery to reattach the tendon. For two more weeks I cannot pick up anything larger than a ballpoint pen.

The prohibition makes sense and is enforced by pain. I am unable to lift a coffee cup normally without pain, and do not try. Doctor's orders.

The pain is mostly the muscles recovering from atrophy, or so I imagine. I know the wound point heals slowly and needs the care of inaction. Yet I must try to touch my shoulder (very hard) and extend my arm fully while moving it from side to side (not so hard.)

This is ten minute Tuesday but I am stopping now. The pain settles in the side of my upper arm when I try to type. About a 6 and not worth it.

God is good. I am overjoyed at the goodness of life. Steady on.

Thanks Be To God

It is a difficult thing to be forced into slowness. Slowness is hard of itself, a discipline not easily embraced. Perhaps it is always forced on us.

After surgery September 23rd I was unable to type normally until the retaining cast came off October 15th. This is my first real foray into typing and it is ok. Still unable to use mouse in right hand. Left hand agility improves of necessity.

Healing is slow and painful. Things wrong must be set right and it always takes time, which takes patience. Patience, after all, is long suffering.

Who can think slow and act slowly? Yes, I know adverb is required and yet language changes, even makes a norm of transgressions. Grammarians would explain why adjectives forced into adverbs' clothing feels better sometimes. No doubt goes with our move from writ to spoken verbiage.

Speaking of, attempting to speak into text rather than typing has been that into which I have dabbled. (Avoiding the ending of sentences with prepositions is another dying practice, up with which I have learned to put, even enjoy.)

My arm hurts, I am almost done. There is so much to say, for life is rich and wonderful and infinitely layered.

Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gifts.

What is the Gospel?

What is the Gospel? Some say ragamuffin – good news for the down and out. Some say Creed, words ringing true to all that is. Many don’t know what the gospel is, a strange word seldom used in normal ways of life.

Gospel means simply “Good News” and for nearly 2,000 years references the story of Christ as we receive it in the New Testament books named after his followers.

What is the Gospel? My needy soul reaches up to God and hopes the Gospel is for the down and out, for those who have received the grace to know how lost they are and how much this world and every single one of us needs a Savior. But of course I also hope it is true, that it can be understood and accessed by normal processes of reason and curiosity and understanding. If the Gospel is true then it can weather the withering storms of centuries of doubt and attack. And so it has.

I hear myself say the Gospel is the Incarnation writ large, or perhaps most accurately the gospel IS the Incarnation. This feels closer to Creed than ragamuffin, but I want to linger here. The Incarnation tells us God is with us. There is no greater Good News. When we hear God is with us we know he did not just select the best and the brightest, the wisest and most erudite. No, he came to be with this world just as it is, full of sadness, darkness, death and loss, disappointment, addiction, broken hearts.

The Gospel is for everyone because the Incarnation is for the whole world: past, present, future. When God touches the world nothing remains as it was. When Joy Davidman Lewis surrendered her life to Christ, she used the expression “God came in” to describe the Wonder of what happened. This can happen in our individual lives because it happened in Bethlehem. If there’s a God, the one whom Christ reveals, this God doesn’t wait for us to seek him out. He seeks us out.

This is the Gospel, the Good News: God has come into the world and we need never be alone again.

Without Typing

I wonder if I can speak a poem, dictate a rhyme, write a verse without writing, only speaking. It is not my custom, this talking while electronic machine turns spoken word into type. For 2 weeks I have been unable to type or write. Hopefully by the weekend I will be able to type again, though my arm which endured surgery will take a while to be fully restored.

I am thankful for limits for I know they teach us. And yet this limit has been very hard. We get used to what we get used to, and the long arm of habit orders our life whether we like it or not. For most of history there was no typing as we know it now. I really don't know how to do this thing so I will stop.