Reflecting One Year Later -- October 29

The flight home.

That wheel chair option is pretty good!  I got into parts of the airport I never was allowed to go before-just sit and let someone else do the work!

I was released from the hospital one evening and on Friday the 29th a year ago I flew home--wrapping my legs in stretch gauze in order to hopefully stave off blood clots.  It was a holiday so no drug stores were open and the hospital did not provide any stretch socks nor did they seems concerned for me to take any blood thinner meds.  Of course writing this one year after the fact I am foreshadowing.  I was aware of the possibility of a clot but was also concerned of the incision, still quite sore, as the immediate concern.  And after all I had been flying for ten years without incident.  Just one prior clot incident in my history ten years before.  Just the surgery and the lack of the aspirin a day different than other flights.  That would not be enough to make any difference would it?

We flew business class--thanks to an adjusted ticket and frequent flyer miles.  (Sitting is still difficult.)  The wife of the couple I was traveling with in Europe went along with me.  It would have been difficult to do myself.

Please sustain me, heal me, restore me...with a redemptive added value that has me live for purpose I journaled.  In my read through Psalms I read 49--the text of the first message I preached in Hong Kong 17 years earlier.  "No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him, the ransom for a life is costly no price is ever enough that he should live on forever and not see decay." I reflected about my life and how I was living it in relation to June, Lia and Austin.  And I continued to want to take steps to rectify the pressure and alienation June had expressed at the start of this trip.

I was also meditating on Ps 46 Come and see the work of the Lord thee evolution he has brought on the earth.

But wait!  The desolation is totally unexpected, he is bringing desolation to the cultural strongholds and powers of the age.  God rises and makes wars cease! He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.  And then his invitation:

be still
   be still and know
      be still and know that I AM God
         I will be exalted!

Lord, the ways I want to see you work often seem not to happen.  Good opportunities seem missed.  but when I "come".  When I am "still". Then I notice grace and the ways you exalt your name.

I was about to get a ring side seat--front and center of God's grace and exaltation of his name in unexpected ways.

How good it was to be welcomed back by June, and to sit in familiar surroundings with people who loved me and knew me.  I took the big recliner chair by the window in the living room.  It was good to be home.