Blog Yellek

You know the signs, you’ve seen them by the side of major roads. The ones that the local Police put up to warn you that they are concentrating on something like speeding or drink driving or seatbelts in a particular area. I’ve never seen the point to them myself because I figure that they should be concentrating on some of that stuff all the time. Yesterday however I saw the most pointless one of those signs I’ve ever seen. You see the police near me are concentrating on…..

Inattentive Drivers

I mean if they are an inattentive driver how would they be reading the sign ?

I finally got around to adding comments to my site. These are open to anyone at present so have fun. If I need to restrict them later I will. Now you can let me know what you think of my posts so don’t be shy!

Today was one of those rare days where I get to throw off the shackles of cubicle life and venture out into the real world to where the medical mavens serving the Department of Health (and who would rename a department so that it has the acronym Doh anyway?) see real patients with real problems. It makes a nice change to get a little closer to the coal face so to speak although being confined to a windowless room mindlessly copying screenshots into a test results document is not my idea of fun. The compensation is that I get to share the room with interesting people who don’t mind playing the odd CD whilst we work and are lots of fun to talk to.

Anyway so here I am checking test results of one sort and one of the people in the room gets a phone call:”Is there anyone around who would be prepared to act as a guinea pig for a new radiographer in training on the big MRI machine in the new radiology department?” “Sure” I say, “why not?” “Hip or shoulder” they ask? Being mindful of the vagaries of drafty patient gowns I prudently opt for the shoulder option. 1:30 OK ? they ask. Sure I say, not really sure what I have got myself into.

And so it was that I had an appointment to be shoved into a constricted plastic tube with my arms strapped to my side and ear plugs in my ears and told to lie perfectly still whilst a big machine made lots of very loud disturbing noises around me for 1/2 an hour. The noises went something like this: first there was a few low volume thunks in the innards of the machine. Then there would be a short burst of some fast or slow paced loud throbbing kind of noise which I guess was to let me know what I was in for next and, after a short pause, about 5 minutes of loud throbbing noises the same which I assume was the real test.

After I got over my initial nerves it was all sort of relaxing in a not so relaxing way, sort of like trying to go to sleep on a long haul flight. Bits of you are cold from the air conditioning (the bits sticking out of the machine or the bits sticking out of those all too small aircraft blankets) and bits of you are warm. You are nearly comfortable (more so in the MRI than on an aircraft) and there is this pervasive noise around you that varies enough so that you can’t completely ignore it and go to sleep but enough to make you sleepy.

As I say a weird day. They promised to get back to me if they actually found anything wrong with my shoulder but they offered a preliminary opinion that it was fine.

I’ve just come back from the 30 Something “camp” at Hosanna Heights where God did some amazing stuff in people’s lives and really blessed a lot of people. Our speaker was Glenda Watson and she taught us some amazing stuff over the three messages she preached.

On Friday night Glenda was preaching on the importance of forgiveness when she started talking about being ambassadors for Christ which is a phrase that occurs in 2 Corinthians 5 and a thought occurred to me. If we were to go to a capital city and see an embassy made out of a few pieces of rusty corrugated iron with the ambassador sitting out the front in rags begging for food then we wouldn’t think much of the country that the ambassador was from. Instead we are ambassadors for the kingdom of God with all its riches and wonders and so our lives should display that status to those around us. Our lives should reflect the Glory of God and indeed we can know that God wants to display His glory in us, in jars of clay.

In pentecostal churches there is often an emphasis placed on the blessings of God to the people of God that I have sometimes found hard to appropriate for my life. When things get hard and I am not seeing the blessings that are so often talked about I look at where my life is at and I say to God “You are God and I will serve you and praise no matter what my circumstances whether things improve or not. Now we do need to hang on to God no matter what but this is missing the point:

If we are to be ambassadors for Christ then we can beilieve in God to change our circumstances so that His glory is better displayed in our lives. Whether or not we have received specific guidance and direction from God on the outcome of our circumstances we can believe that He will want to better display His glory in our lives for His own sake, let alone because He loves us with everything He has. Looking at it this way changes our desire for blessing from serving our own selfish ends to one to see God’s name glorified in our lives and our circumstances, and isn’t that the point of our existence anyway?

Number 1: When your Mum rings you up and asks you for a recipe.