"Lord, show me your glory."

“Lord, show me your glory.” The first day of the work week started with my pulling into the driveway of the nursing home where I work, recalling the request that preacher Rick made the day before. Just as Moses boldly asked God to show him His glory, we too this week were to say that from time to time, asking for a glimpse of God’s glory during the week and let Rick know what happened.
As I came in the door, preparing to go to the kitchen for that first cup of coffee, Julie asked me if I was going to clock in. I said that I was, and she told me she needed help. It seems that the resident wandering system was giving a false alarm to the pagers that the nursing staff was carrying, and they couldn’t stop them. Pagers were going off about every minute, saying that someone had wandered away, but no one was missing. Obviously, staff had better things to do than squelch pagers every minute. After a phone call to the service company and some work on our end, we found the problem and got the alarms to work properly. “Lord, show me your glory.”
Since we had let our housekeeper go a couple of weeks ago due to a slower than anticipated start-up, as Director of Environmental Services it was my job to see that the building was clean. I started immediately following the alarm problem to clean the bathrooms, thinking that coffee at the end of the cleaning session would be a good motivator. One, two, three public restrooms and the employee break room needed attention. I was in the process of finishing that chore when one of the aides came up to me and told me that one of the residents had soiled the floor in his room, and could I clean it up, pretty please. “Lord, show me your glory.”
By now, it was 9:45am and I still had not had coffee. As a bona fide coffee drinker for more years than I care to count, I was feeling the withdrawal. My back hurt, I was tired and perspiring (nursing homes are usually notoriously hot…residents are more comfortable that way) and I was longing for the taste and smell of the coffee bean. But something else was now demanding my attention.
While I was on my way to the room that had the soiled floor, my phone rang. I answered and the alarm service company wanted me to do some reprogramming of their system. I told them that I’d have to call back in a few minutes after taking care of the floor emergency. What I didn’t tell them was that I also was going to have that first coffee before I placed the callback. “Lord, show me your glory.”
Gloves, disinfectant, cleaning water, wet vac, housekeeping cart…now I could attend to the soiled floor. I cleaned up the mess, then cleaned the wet vac, put away the cart, and set a small fan in the room to help dry the floor. I took off my gloves, washed my hands, and went to the kitchen for that first cup of Joe at about 10:30. Pouring my cup and taking the first taste, I quickly discovered that the pot had been on a burner that was turned off. The coffee was lukewarm at best. Returning to the kitchen, I put my cup in the micro zapper and promptly boiled it. Drinking it anyway, I relished the time with my cup and the disappearing pain in my back. “Lord, show me your glory.”

The Call

We've been reading these last couple of days about an accident in Ulysses, Kansas that claimed the lives of four teen girls and injured a fifth. It was an auto accident that happened in the community, a tragedy that is touching the lives of countless thousands of people.
When I was the administrator of the hospital out in Western Kansas, we would be called upon from time to time to provide care in similar situations. I also wrote a continuing column for the Hays Daily News while we lived out there. One of my articles talked about a time when I received a call from the hospital to come and help out with an auto accident. The story is true. The article is reprinted below.

The call comes at about 4:30 this morning. I stumble out of bed, fumble for my glasses (to see the caller ID) and make my way to the phone. I was laying in bed awake anyway, as I all too often do, at about that time of morning. "Logan County Hospital", the caller ID said. I answer and Paula tells me that we have six teen-age victims of an auto accident coming in to the hospital, and could my wife (an RN) and I come in and help? I don't say so, but it seems that whenever I get calls like this, Paula is on the other end of the line. Does she work all the time?? I say, "Sure, we'll be there in a few minutes." I hang up and wake my bride and tell her we're needed ASAP.

We struggle to find clothes, shoes, and to more fully wake up. Since I was laying awake in bed anyway, I was more ready to go than she was. I started her car for her and left in my pickup because often, I must stay over while she can come back home. On the way to the hospital, I pass the ambulance garage/fire department and see all the vehicles of the volunteers who responded to their pagers a few minutes ago. As an active (although I seldom can take call now) EMT, I know and understand what they are doing and thinking right now.

I arrive at the hospital and go to the nurses station to check in. They have already called in most of who are needed. The providers are all there, and several nurses and nursing staff are there, along with a housekeeper, a business office person, medical records, social services, maintenance, and of course lab and x ray. I ask the unit clerk to call in Dietary as it is 4:30am and we may well need to feed some of the staff and volunteers.

The first ambulance pulls in and I help unload the three victims who came in on this unit. The providers quickly do triage and the second ambulance comes in a little later. We do the triage again with the other three. I make the rounds just making sure that people have what they need, and that families who come to the hospital are as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. I bring up a carafe of coffee and cups for the families in the waiting area.

We had plenty of help this Sunday morning and I really wasn't needed to any great extent other than to help smooth out some rough edges and make some phone calls. The providers and staff at the hospital do so well with these things. They've grown considerably over time, and I couldn't ask for better people. I sometimes stand in the hall and just watch as they go about their business in a controlled chaos mode. I marvel at the competence and compassion of those in my charge and breathe a silent prayer of thanksgiving for them, as well as petition the Almighty on behalf of the injured and families.

Regrettably, the above scenario becomes somewhat routine in health care. Some of those we treat are more severely injured than our ability to care for them, other than stabilization, and we ship them to Hays, Wichita, or Denver by air ambulance. Some we treat and release. Some are admitted to the hospital for further care. Some wait in silence in a room off to the side down the hall until the mortuary car can come pick them up. The number of victims can be anywhere from 2 to 32, depending on whether it's a car, van, or bus.

Too often, the victims are the innocent. Often, alcohol is involved. Often, speed is involved. Often, it's a gravel road somewhere out in the county. Often, it's after midnight. Often, we know the victims. Often, someone either dies or has to be shipped to a trauma center for life-threatening injuries. Rarely is it a no-fault accident. Rarely is no one injured.

Later, after the chaos has died down, several of us are in the staff dining room munching on food prepared by Dietary. Paula says, "Maybe this will wake up some people and they'll see what they're doing to themselves."

I tell her, "Paula, we say that each time this happens, and it continues to happen."

Mary says, "They think they're invincible."

I say, "But maybe some of them will see what happened here and learn from it."

However, much as we want to do so, we are impotent to truly stop what has happened, and we know it. Whether those who are hurt are innocent victims or the cause of the accident, the results are often the same. People will continue to drive too fast, fall asleep at the wheel, become distracted at the wrong time, or drink and drive. They will have accidents and die and cause others to die. And we know that we'll all do this again, maybe tomorrow, maybe six months from tomorrow. But we WILL be here again.

Thanksgiving and Humility

I ate at the local Dillons today. They have a salad bar in most stores, and I went to the one down the street and got some greens (and reds and other colors). I came back to eat it and decided that this too was a rather miraculous thing.
Now, hear me out. I don't necessarily think everything is a miracle. But just think about it a minute.
This salad bar must have had at least 20 different kinds of fresh vegetables and fruits. Everything from spinach to fresh pineapple was on the bar. There were four kinds of leaves...spinach and three lettuces, at least three different kinds of tomatoes, snow peas, water chestnuts, garbanzos, and who knows what else.
There were strawberries, grapes, pineapple, and several other fruits. In addition, there were salads, cottage cheese, pasta, ham, turkey, and other meats. Besides that, there were grated cheeses, bleu cheese crumbles, bacon bits, and other condiments.
All of this was the right temperature for safety, was clean, sanitary and available, and cost only $5.00 a pound. Now, I don't know about you, but for us to take that kind of thing for granted and just expect it seems to me to be the height of arrogance and selfishness. I'd rather think that thanksgiving and humility are more in order.

Buying Into the Story

Yesterday I called my sis and we visited for awhile. Now, there’s nothing much unusual about that since telephones have been in service for well over a hundred years. What was unusual was that she was on a train parked at a station somewhere in Illinois and I had on the PC in front of me an aerial shot of the place where it was parked.

While visiting with her, I pointed out the water tower, the depot and museum. When she told me they were starting to move again, I told her that she should be starting a right curve, which she validated.

Additionally, since we were in the Wichita area and she had a Wichita cell phone, I dialed a local, seven digit number and her phone rang on a train in a small town in Illinois.

I don’t know how much awareness you have of the incredible technology that makes all of that possible. I don’t know either, but I have had electronics training (years ago), and have some dim, dark idea of the complexity of the systems that make things like cell phones and instantly available aerial photos available on demand.

The data packets that constituted my voice could easily have taken a route to Illinois via California or Canada. Those that made up my sister’s voice very well may have come to Wichita via an entirely different route, and those routes could have changed many, many times in the course of the five minute conversation. Fiber (optical), landline (copper wires), microwave, satellite…all those methods and more may have been involved in getting an ordinary phone call to and from where it was supposed to be.

Some years ago, the number 1,000,000,000,000,000 (I think that’s correct…One quadrillion) was given as the amount of bits per second that the human brain could process. An older number in the same article was given as ten sextillion bits of information. Whatever the number, it is incredibly high and belies a kind of design that fits it all inside a rather smallish mass of skin and bone, with corresponding connections and energy supply (blood). I don’t know but what we will eventually develop computers that will process faster or store more information. If we do, that’s OK. What matters is that this brain has been around for many, many thousands of years and there are some seven billion of them on the planet even now. Someone greater than these brains had to be the one who designed and built it.

This weekend we celebrate the foundational moment of the creation of Christianity. The moment when, we believe, the only Begotten of God conquered death and destruction and paved the way for all of us to do likewise through the power of the Living God. Fantastic as the Easter story sounds to ears not accustomed to it, it is even more fantastic to believe that our brains came into existence by chance and that we are products of an inanimate process which happened to end up with all that we see and know now.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll buy into the Jesus is risen story any day over the existence by chance story.

Grudging Acceptance

We’re still looking for homes to buy. This is a process that I certainly don’t enjoy, especially knowing that it probably will be one of the largest purchases I will ever commit to do. Additionally, one who buys on credit bares his soul to the lender down to underwear size, it seems. Then there’s the “how are we ever going to pay for this?” silent conversations one has in one’s brain after the deal is done.

Actually, we have one picked out and we’re trying to find financing for it. In this market, that’s not a piece of cake. We don’t have much money for a down payment, so have to rely on high-percentage financing, which is even worse. The market is still good in the Wichita area, and the local economy is still pretty strong and growing, but because of the national scare stories, the lenders have gone into hiding.

But the thing that I really don’t like is that I feel guilty each time we do this because I know that the vast majority of the world’s population lives in a cardboard box, mud hut, or refugee camp. They haven’t a clue what clean water is like, and when they have to use the restroom, they just do it wherever. Good food is non existent and clothes are at a premium.

I feel like a heel, sometimes, spending money on a place that is larger than we need, has more amenities than we need, and looks nicer than we need. If I had my “druthers,” I wouldn’t have such a place. But in this society…in this day and age…it comes down to safety, ability to be a person (to have a real identity, one needs an address), and security for family.

I’ll grudgingly go along with this, but long for the place one day where none of this will matter and everyone who loves God will have a place to call home forever.

Sundays

This was another Sunday. It’s toward the close of the day, now, and things are winding down (yes, winding down) toward the first day of work for this week.

Sundays are always a big day for me. Not only do we attend church, we re-connect with people we haven’t seen for at least several days and renew acquaintances. We also take time to rest, refresh, and generally regroup for the work week ahead. Sunday is a big day.

I think of all of this, the re-connecting with others in our church fellowship rank right up there with the best. I don’t even now know all the names of the people that attend our church, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we all show up on the same day at the same time, as a family. We visit, catch up on each others’ lives, share common faith and values, and sometimes take a common meal together. We laugh and sometimes we cry. We share successes and sorrows. We rejoice in the good and are concerned about the bad. We choose to become a part of the lives of others and they choose to make us a part of their lives. It’s a good time.

Most of all, we make a connection with our God. Somehow, some way, we not only refresh our relationships with others; we also refresh our relationship with our Creator and Maker. Our singing, listening, praying, communing, and relating with one-another all come together to make our relationship with our God something real and thrilling. We find something greater than ourselves, which gives us strength to carry on through the week to come.

I know that many folks don’t have Sunday be any more special than any other day, or consider it just another weekend day that they can sleep in or go to the lake. That’s OK. It’s not what I would do, but to each his own. I do think, though, that those folks are missing out on something that would give their lives more meaning and fulfillment. My faith is not a crutch; it’s a vital part of who I am. I’d be lost without it.

Thoughts About Blogging

I try to blog mid-week, but didn’t get it done this time. It’s difficult for me to sit down after work and make the words flow onto the computer screen. As I’ve said before, it seems that I do better at that in the morning hours.

I’ve observed a lot this past week, and thought several times that what I’ve seen might be worthy of a blog entry. However, by the time I sit down to write, those things seem to be not nearly as important as they were when they happened.

Let’s see. This week I thought about blogging regarding poor customer service at a big box home improvement store, poor customer service at a chain hardware store, the fact that my debit card doesn’t work and no one at the bank can seem to tell me why, and the way drivers sometimes do crazy things on the road.

I’ve thought about blogging about the clerk who put a smile on my face when I checked out, a funny situation at work, the warming weather, and the dinner we had last night with the family and a new “friend” of one of my nephews.

I’ve also pondered blogging about our house hunting experience so far, the inexorable march of time into spring and summer, my lack of energy to do anything productive during the week except work, and various political situations (the Air Force tanker deal, Barack Obama’s minister, etc).

None of that, however, seems worth the time and space this week. So I suppose I’ll just forego blogging today in favor of taking care of some other business, such as getting my debit card to work and continuing hunting for a home. Maybe I’ll have something to say when the day is done.

God and Communication

I am attending a class at church on Sundays where we are looking at the life of Abraham, the father of the Jewish and Arab races. The account is centered primarily in the book of Genesis, beginning with about chapter 12. The thing we concentrated on today was the notion that Abraham left the comfort of a “home place” to go somewhere that he had never been before because he believed that God was sending him there. We talked about the uncertainty that might cause, and the fact that Abraham had faith in God and a hope for the future.

The teacher opened up the class for anyone to tell of a time when they believed that they too did something because they believed that God was asking them to do it, not knowing what the future would hold. One or two spoke about their experiences. The teacher then asked us how it is that we hear God. If God communicates to us in some way regarding what we should do, how do we perceive what He is saying to us?

Our church is a rather conservative group. We normally do not believe that God appears to us as a ghostly image floating in the corner, or that He speaks audibly to us, or even that He sends angels to us. We normally give answer that God speaks to us “through His word,” which means that we understand what God wants us to do by reading and understanding the Bible. We then talked about how we think that God speaks in ways that we don’t readily understand or have difficulty perceiving. That answer, however, doesn’t seem to me to be adequate to explain things in their entirety.

I find it incredible that we would believe that God formulates His communications to us in ways that are difficult to perceive and difficult to understand…that we somehow have to decipher, decode, translate, interpret, and work out the otherwise unintelligible something that God uses to communicate to us. It’s almost as if we believe that God intentionally codes His communications to us as a kind of a game where if we manage to crack the code, we somehow win (but we don’t win very often).

I would much rather think that the God of the universe as I know Him is such that, if He desires for us to know something, He will make it so plain to us that we can’t help but understand what He is trying to tell us…that it would only be through our own ignorance, selfishness, or lack of desire to understand which would prevent us from hearing our God with clear understanding.

I believe that I am an adopted child of God…that I am a fellow-heir to all that God has along with all others who are children of God and with God’s only Begotten and Eternal Son. I believe that I belong to a community of believers called the church, and that we all are children and joint-heirs with the Son. God has not, to my knowledge, communicated with me audibly, except through the words of human beings as they taught, preached, or read the Bible aloud. But I must say that, as any father worth his salt communicates with his children, so God communicates with His children, and in ways much more understandable than even an earthly father would use. I can’t believe that I am so dense that, as God’s child, I cannot perceive and understand the communication from my Father to myself. I can’t imagine that God my Father is playing some sort of cruel game where He forces me to guess what He’s trying to tell me about my life and life choices, then punishes me somehow when I don’t figure it out.

No, I believe my Father’s communication with me is clear, concise, and true. I believe that He tailors His communication with all His children in various ways so that each one can best understand what He’s trying to say. And I believe that it’s my weaknesses and my failures that prevent me from hearing (with understanding) what He is saying, whatever method He is using to say it. It’s not my job to try to decipher God’s coded messages, because He doesn’t use code. Rather, it’s my job to have my life arranged in such a way that God’s communication can not only get through, but that I can understand it like He intended.

Two Stores

Friday evenings are not a good time to put thoughts into words for me. I’m tired from a week of work, and my brain just wants to zone out to somewhere besides the computer screen. However, I also know that I need to not be lazy and keep things active, so I’m attempting to make something here that is somewhat coherent and perhaps a little interesting to those three or four who read it.

On the way home from work today, I was thinking about the differences in the two hardware stores I patronize in Wichita. One is close by to my work, and the other is close by where I used to work, but is a good 20 minute drive from where I work now.

The one close by is a good store and has a lot of inventory, but their help leaves something to be desired. Sometimes I can’t find anyone to help no matter where I look. Other times they don’t have what I need (although they are the larger of the stores).

The smaller, older store has things, though, that the bigger store doesn’t stock. The smaller store also has associates that will spend 20 minutes on a 32 cent bolt, if that’s what it takes to make a satisfied customer. The bigger store too often will just say, “We don’t have that,” rather than try to meet the need.

Why is it that some people have learned the secret to customer service, but many have not? Why is it so difficult for store owners and managers to know what customers want? Why don’t more store managers and owners work to find solutions that will help customers, yet not break the bank in terms of overhead?

The little Ace hardware store at 13^th and Meridian in Wichita seems to have figured that out. Whatever it is that they do, they do it well because I have nothing but good feelings about that store, and will drive out of my way to go there. The other store, out on Tyler and Central, has not nearly as good of a rapport with me, and I go there only because they are closer and I don’t have to drive as much. If both stores were side by side, I’d go to the older store every time…every time…every time. I wonder if I should tell that to the manager of the larger store?

I'm Just Happy

Once again it’s time to disrupt (that may be a rather strong term, but I feel disruptive today) the normal flow of things and “spring forward” an hour in order to have more daylight at the end of the day. I know that doing this saves a little on energy consumption, and provides more time for people to do things during daylight after work, but we need to look at the morning hours and those of us who wake early enough to see the sun come up. I think that we are the forgotten of our society, and long to see amends made in our favor. Why should the night owls have all the fun?

Taking an hour from morning daylight means that I again will be waking in the dark, commuting to work in the dark, and otherwise feeling like I never quite got enough sleep the night before. I know that’s a small price to pay for the privilege of doing extra shopping at Wal Mart. It’s also a small price to pay to be able to garden, cut the grass, or whatever else we will do with our newly-found hour of daylight. Nevertheless, it is a price. I wonder if anyone has taken the time to discover how much discombobulation really happens in the lives of people that have the time jerked around a couple times a year.

Of course, there’s also the price to be paid in having to expend the energy to change clocks. I wonder if anyone has calculated how much energy is expended changing clocks versus how much energy is saved by moving daylight to the evening hours.

Of course, there are benefits as well. Some smoke alarm batteries would never be replaced if the government wouldn’t mess around with the time. Some people would never see the sun rise if daylight saving time didn’t happen once a year. And we would never know the joy of atomic clocks that, although they have nothing to do with atomic energy, receive radio signals regularly that automatically adjust their time to be correct, including springing forward or falling back. By the way, these radio signals which the Chinese clock factories use, have been in existence since 1956 from radio station WWVB, broadcasting at 50khz and 50kw E.R.P. out of Fort Collins, Colorado. Other radio stations also operated by the government have been broadcasting time signals for over 100 years, usually in the shortwave spectrum.

I guess that overall, though, the benefits outweigh the disruptions. Our government says so, and we all know that no one in government lies to us. Oh, occasionally there may be a misspeak or a misunderstand or embellishment, but never a lie. So dutifully I will set my clocks ahead an hour tomorrow morning (or tonight) and partake in that extra free hour of light so generously given by my government. And I am so grateful….

Something Worth Seeing

We went to the Kansas Salt Museum today. Now, before you begin to snicker at the dearth of great opportunities to have some fun in Kansas, let me tell you that the highlight of the museum is a trip below ground over 600 feet into an active salt mine.

The first part of the tour is a safety video and demonstration on how to use a rescue breathing mask that each of us had to carry into the mine. We also put on hard hats and headed to the mine shaft and elevator.

The lift isn’t like the ones in a hotel. It’s a double-decker lift, with room for about 15 people on each level. It rattles around as it descends, and the descent is in total darkness until we reach the mine (there’s a light on the elevator, but they keep it off unless someone admits they’re nervous about it).

At the bottom, we’re greeted and step into another world. Everything we are looking at is salt. There’s a salt ceiling, salt floor, and salt walls. The pillars that hold up the earth above us are salt. The concrete that has been poured in some areas is a combination of salt and Portland cement.

The guide leads us to a tram and about a 30 minute trip through some of the mine shafts. They really aren’t like a mine shaft you think about…they are more like highways underground. The shafts are 9 to 12 feet tall, 20 to 40 feet wide, and there are over 60 miles of them in this one mine, spread over 1,600 acres. You can listen to the trip down at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5595503 .

And it really is dark down there. In a back area of our tour, with the lights of the tram off, we really couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. The guide says our eyes would never become accustomed to this kind of darkness, because eyes don’t get accustomed to darkness…they become accustomed to various levels of light. When there’s no light, there’s no reference for the eyes to work from.

They have old equipment on display down there, and also have a gift shop as well as artifacts from a company called Underground Vaults & Storage (www.undergroundvaults.com), which uses part of the mine to store archival records and other items for companies. Motion pictures, data, records, and other things are stored there, and the company has a small exhibit displaying some of the stored artifacts.

I was just a little, shall we say, unnerved by the experience. Although I wasn’t frightened or uncomfortable, it is a little unsettling to know that there is 600 feet of salt, rock, and water above, being held at bay by pillars of salt. The notion that one could easily become lost in the mine is also one that I thought about, although I believe they had fencing that kept most shafts from being accessible. The fencing wasn’t always visible, but some was. It would be difficult for me to work down there for awhile until I became more at ease with the environment.

The sunlight and wind were a warm welcome upon coming out of the shaft. I have a new appreciation today for the outdoors and the freedom it represents. But the experience of the salt mine was also one that I would do again, and probably will when I have the opportunity. And so should you.