Writings
For years I have been attempting to “translate” medical complexities into understandable and helpful concepts for my patients and my students. That translation work has often extended outward to nonmedical people, as well. Now I want to extend this teaching to you.
Note: the patients in these accounts are intentionally de-identified. Specific details have been changed to obscure identities, and some persons are composites. These patients presented in the stories are not intended to represent actual individuals and should not be construed as such.
A Masterful, Meticulous God, Part 1
The patient’s thirst mechanism is deranged, and he begins drinking water with the same avid obsession of a mental delusion. The sodium level falls in the blood because of dilution. Out of unbearable thirst Roscoe has drunk water to the point of death.
KNOWLEDGE IN THE NIGHT
There are perhaps tens of thousands of stars in space for every single grain of sand on the entire earth.
The Message of Creation: Mastery and Brilliance, Part 2
DNA is a long molecule in your every cell, containing coded instructions for all the processes that happen in your body and forming a blueprint for a unique human being: you! Imagine that your DNA is a long ticker tape of paper with a huge string of letters written on it. Inscribed there in a chemical alphabet of just four characters is a book over three billion (3,000,000,000) letters long, comprising twenty-three chapters known as chromosomes. If you were to read aloud continuously the letters in the DNA from just a single cell in your body, you would be speaking for nine and a half years! Now that is hardly casual beach reading! By comparison, Tolstoy’s lengthy novel War and Peace contains a mere 560,000 words.
The Message of Creation: Mastery and Brilliance
In each of us God has crammed about ten billion tiny capillaries, and the total mileage of capillaries in the combined arterial system of just one human body is over 60,000 miles. Yes, inside your body is a roadway network long enough to circle the world more than twice!
The Message of Creation: Glory and Beauty
Humans have always been tempted to worship the creation because it is so impressive. We laugh at frolicking dolphins and cringe at snapping sharks. How should we react to the composer of birdsong and the painter of sunsets? What must it be to behold his face? Gather up all the fear, rapture, and peace that you have ever experienced in nature. Now multiply it to infinity!
Clamoring for Attention, Part 2
We need a doorway of sudden insight, like that moment of connection when a photo of Alice Thorner opened my eyes and revealed an opportunity for her healing.
Clamoring for Attention, Part 1
Perhaps she sensed my uncertainty, because for the first time she looked up, made fleeting eye contact with me, then weakly slipped something into my hand. The sight of this tiny object hit me like a karate chop. Instantly I knew that this poor lady was indeed seriously ill, and I must do everything in my power to help her.
The Image of God
Written for Martin Luther King Day Today I am republishing something I wrote in 2021. A Dim Image Four years ago Bennett Jones, a hardcore narcotic addict, was paralyzed in an auto accident while driving intoxicated. The other driver, a young mother, was killed. The...
A New Year’s Wish: To Acquire and To Apply Knowledge
Contrary to the promises of the digital age, living so much of our lives virtually has not freed us from the constraints of the material world. In many cases it has trapped us in our own heads.