Janet's Blog

As I've been playing and singing my way through Grandma's hymnal, I've noticed a thing or two.  First of all, those songwriters way back then, a hundred years ago or more, seemed to be obsessed with death.  It seems like nearly every hymn has a verse in it about leaving this earth and going to heaven; a significant number of songs have death and eternal life as their whole theme.  Perhaps this is evidence of how sheltered and spoiled we have become in the twenty-first century. The average life span in the U.S. is nearly eighty now; in 1930, the average life expectancy was less than 60; one hundred fifty years ago, the average life lasted just thirty-five or forty years.  It's easy to understand why people were once so concerned about death and eternal life when many children didn't live past infancy and many mothers died in childbirth.  In nineteenth century America, a diagnosis of tuberculosis or cancer was always a death sentence, and it wasn't unusual for

Whether or not they are Irish, nearly everybody in our country wears green on St. Patrick's Day--or they may defiantly choose not to.  A day that was first celebrated in Ireland over a thousand years ago, as a religious holiday, has morphed into a widespread celebration of all things Irish.  So, in New York, people celebrate with a huge parade.  In Chicago, they dye the river green.  In classrooms all over the country, little green-clad men, known as leprechauns, sneak around wreaking havoc.  Bars throughout the U.S., and in many other countries as well, serve green beer, and restaurant fare includes corned beef and cabbage.           So, who was St. Patrick, anyway?  Before he became the Roman Catholic patron saint of Ireland, he was born in Roman Britain near the beginning of the fifth century.  When Patrick was sixteen years old, he was kidnapped and brought to Ireland as a slave.  He managed to escape six years later, and returned to Britain, where he converted

So, that little gas bubble is still there, hovering harmlessly in my left eye, too small to continue its job as a band-aid for the surgical incisions in my retina.  When I tilt my head down, just a little bit, I can see the whole thing, floating there in the center of my vision, like a little round ball edged in black.  If I look through the bubble, I can tell what I am seeing through it, like looking at an object underwater.  When I gaze ahead normally, I still see the top of the bubble; I can see most of the room above the bubble now, although it's quite blurry even with my glasses on.  Little black floaters dart about in my periphery like annoying little gnats, disturbing my solitude.  Lines that should be straight appear to be wavy, and the space above the gas bubble shimmers, with rays of light spreading from its surface like the rays on a child's colored yellow sun.  For the time being, it is less distracting for me to walk outdoors, or read, with my offending lef

As I recover from eye surgery, I am in awe, once again, to think how perfectly our eyes have been created.  I am convinced that such intricate organs as our eyes don't just evolve!  We are blessed to see the world in great detail, in three dimensions, and in glorious colors.  And God, in his infinite wisdom, gave each of us two eyes, so if one is injured, the other can still see.  Perfection like this can't happen merely by chance; it requires a plan. Not only did God plan everything and everyone he made on the Earth, but he had another perfect plan, from the very beginning of time, to rescue us from the messes we make because of our sin.  Jesus came to fulfill God's eternal plan.  Some people may question Jesus' purpose on Earth and his ultimate death and resurrection, but scholars can't deny Jesus' existence or his lasting influence here on Earth.  Just think--what would life be like if Jesus had never come? Jesus treated the world's outcasts a

Oh, the trials my left eye has put me through!  Somehow, it developed a macular hole in the retina, which obliterated much of the central vision in that eye.  So, after seeing several specialists, and enduring lopsided vision and resulting headaches for several long weeks, I finally had surgery to fix the hole.   The surgery itself wasn't too taxing; my surgeon was competent in spite of the fact that he looked to be about sixteen years old.  No, the culprit of the surgery was that infuriating gas bubble that the surgeon placed in my eye to act as a band-aid for the repaired hole in the back of my eye.  The trouble was that the bubble floated around in my eye, only doing its job when I was face down, with gravity forcing that little bubble into place against my retina. The ophthamologists in Scottsbluff are not equipped to do this particular procedure, so Bill and I made the trip to Denver for the surgery, knowing that we would have to remain in a hotel in Denver fo