Lone star tick, yesterday. I’m eatin’ all the red meat I can while I can. *heh* (Small, small, small chance of developing alpha-gal meat allergy, but I’m gonna test my system to “destruction” just in case. 🙂 ).
File This Under “I’m a Uniter, Not a Divider” *heh*
😉
Really? Do Tell. . .
I saw a social media post recently cursing at God because one of the writer’s musical icons has COPD. It’s God’s fault, apparently, that this musician’s lifestyle, which includes some pf the leading risk factors for COPD apparently contributed to his health problems, but apparently God made him engage in risky health practices. *shrugs* ‘S’all right. God has big shoulders. Curse Him if you will (for all the good it will do anyone, which is zero). *sigh*
The main causes/risk factors of COPD are:
Smoking
Air pollution
Occupational exposure- Intense and prolonged exposure to workplace dusts, chemicals and fumes
Genetics
Infectious diseases such as AIDS and tuberculosis increase risk of COPD
Heck, even the musician himself “blames” an occupational hazard, viz.,
[Ian] Anderson noted that he has not had an exacerbation for a while, an improvement he puts down to living in the pollution-free English countryside – and blamed on stage smoke machines for his ill health.
“Today they’re (smoke machines) referred to as ‘hazers,’ as if they’re somehow innocent and not damaging to your lungs,” he fumed. “I really do believe that’s a very significant part of the problem that I have.”
Another View of Faith
I have posted before that our part of faith =~= trusting obedience. Today, a streaming video study of Psalm 32 cut out shortly after verse 9 had been read, and it seemed propitious, as it spurred me to recall moments with horses that allow me to expand on that verse:
Psalm 32:9 “Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.”
Several things popped out at me when I read this this AM. . .
Yes, ordinarily horses need to be controlled via external means such as a bit and bridle, for guidance’s sake for both them and any person around them, but. . .
There is much more to control of an equine than a bit in their mouths and a hand on the reins controlling them through that bit. There can be relationship, as well, and teaching/training, and. . . trust.
The relationship between the horses and their trainer in the video above are a good metaphor, IMO, for the relationship God desires with his people: a relationship of trust and obedience. Know this full well: those horses would not be so very compliant had their trainer not well and truly earned their trust through consistent and judicious care.
While I have never experienced that level of trusting obedience from a horse, I have had glimpses of it, brief moments where the trust a horse placed in me were humbling, engendering an even greater desire to be trustworthy. If we could but grasp a bit of that for our relationship with God, we would find Him completely, over and abundantly, worthy of our trust.