Life Alert

 

“Dr. Waldron, it was the worst feeling in the world!”  The elderly man told me. 

“I can imagine,” I said. 

“I don’t even know what I tripped on.  I think I must have gotten my feet tangled up underneath me and I went down on the ground.  I didn’t hear a snap, but all I knew was that immediately there was a horrible pain in my left hip!” 

“That’s terrible,” I said.  I knew generally what had happened, but the hospital historical documents had been a little scanty on the details.  “Were you by yourself?” 

“That’s the worst of it, Doctor,” Hugh told me.  “Elsie was there, but you know how bad her dementia is.  I might as well have been by myself.  She knew something was wrong, but she couldn’t seem to figure out what to do to help.  I kept telling her, ‘Call 911 Elsie!’ and she kept saying, ‘What’s the number?  What’s the number?’” 

“Finally, I figured out that I wasn’t going to get any help from her and so I dragged myself across the floor to where my cell phone was sitting on top of a dresser and I pulled myself up and was able to call for help.  Fortunately, they came pretty quick and took me to the hospital.  I never want to go through that again!” 

This, of course, is why medical alert companies have sold so many bracelets and necklaces.  I have read that there around 17 million devices sold that promise to alert someone if you have fallen and cannot get up. 

Psalm 145:14 says, “The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down.”

None of us wants to fall.  The famous quote is that it isn't the fall that hurts you, it is the sudden stop, but regardless of the cause of the pain, as we get older, neither falls, sudden stops, or their aftermath are fun to experience.  

Of course, not at all falls are physical.  Some are of a deeper variety and yet even there, God has promised to forgive and heal and to restore.  We may be bowed down with pain, but He will raise us up, if we only let Him.

It is such a blessing to serve a God who knows our weakness and listens to our cries when we are hurting.  It is encouraging to realize that even on days with more gravity, He will continue to help us up.  He is even better than a life alert bracelet, for He is always there -- even when the bracelet is on the counter and we are on the floor.

Baby Shark Concerto?!

 

“Baby Shark!!” My four-year-old daughter shouted, banging the piano keys like a deaf Beethoven figuring out the main melody of his 9th Symphony.  She wasn't particularly tuneful, but her harmony did keep time with her words.  “doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo.  Baby Shark!!”

“Daddy Shark!!” boomed in the second verse with even more vibration of the piano strings.  Elise was wringing every bit of emotion this song had out of it.

“Grandpa Shark!!!!”  Followed by the requisite doo-doos and clashing of keys.  I wasn’t sure if the piano would survive.  I was sure my ears wouldn’t make it.

“It’s the end…  It’s the end…  IT’S THE END!!!”  The last note was a shriek that would have made the fat lady at the opera wish she could hit notes like that, if she had just heard it. Then the sound slowly died away.

“Sounded like Baby Shark,” I said nonchalantly to my son, Vincent.

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you like it?”  I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said.  “Probably not.”

“I have an idea,” I said.  “Maybe you could someday write a theme and variations on Baby Shark – or better yet – a Piano Concerto!  The Baby Shark Piano Concerto, people would come out to hear it just because of the name.

Vincent shook his head.  This did not sound like a good plan to him and frankly, it doesn’t really to me either.  There are melodies out there that are beautiful and haunting, but the tune of Baby Shark is simply haunting.  Expanding it out to a ten- or twenty-minute classical piece of music sounds like a disaster only surpassed by the volcanic eruption at Pompei.

It strikes me that there are some things that need to be brief.  Preachers and politicians are often fond of the sound of their own voice and say with ten words what could be said with two or three words.

Proverbs 10:19 contains the wise saying, “ In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: But he that refraineth his lips is wise.”  Quite simply, we are far more likely to get into trouble when we talk a whole lot than we sit and listen.

More than that, a little bit goes a long way.  This is true when it comes to words and speeches.  It is even true when it comes to the song Baby Shark, where a single verse is better than the whole song – even if it is played by a precocious four year old on a Baldwin Upright Piano.

Thoughts on Columbus Day

 

Columbus Day is in the rear view mirror.  I grew up believing that Columbus was a man who spoke truth to power and sailed confidently into the west knowing that he would find the land of Subway, McDonald’s, and Chipotle.  Fighting through hurricane force winds and dealing with the doubts of his men, he finally arrived at a retirement community in South Florida, where he gave all of the native American residents gold plated walkers and promised them, “I shall return!”

Or something like that.

The only problem is that most of we believe about Columbus is false and when you know the truth about this man, it is hard to celebrate a man whose only strength was his bull dog determination to pursue a false idea.

Even blind squirrels find nuts, but we don’t have a national holiday for “Blind Squirrel Day.”

Columbus Wasn’t that Great

There are many websites devoted to unpacking the terribleness of Mr. Columbus.  He wasn’t the only person of his era who believed the earth was round – everyone knew it was round – he was just clueless as to the dimensions of the earth, thinking that it was only 2,400 miles from the Canary Islands to Asia, rather than the more than 10,000 miles it actually was.  Lucky for him the Americas stood in his way or he would never have made it.

More than that, he journeyed not once, but four different times to the Americas over about 15 years of time and never figured out that he wasn’t in the Pacific Ocean – even though many people back in Spain were certain that he was nowhere near Asia. 

It is hard for me to sort out how many of the claims about Mr. Columbus are true.  What is certain is that he enslaved many of the native peoples, using some of them brutally to do hard work on the islands and sending others into slavery in Spain.  Thousands of them died under the lash and more died from illnesses like Small Pox that devastated the local populations.

After his third voyage, Christopher Columbus was removed as governor in the New World by King Ferdinand and was sent home in chains.  While he was eventually released from prison, it seems clear that he was not a good governor and was removed for a mixture of reasons, including the brutality with which he treated the Spanish colonists and general mismanagement.

In fact, for the next one hundred years, he was seldom mentioned in histories of the Age of Discovery.  America was named after a different man -- Amerigo Vespucci -- and Columbus faded into the background of history.

Why do we celebrate Columbus Day?

Honestly, I am not totally sure.  It is a bankers holiday, which means that most of us don’t even contemplate not going to work.  The only way I know that Columbus Day has been and gone is that there is less junk mail in my mail box than usual.  On the other hand, 26 states don’t have any sort of holiday on the second Monday in October and only 16 states still recognize this day as Columbus Day.

Those states that still celebrate this day are renaming this holiday to Indigenous Peoples Day.  So far, seventeen have done so, but I’m guessing that more will follow suit down the road.  I think this is totally reasonable – it isn’t as though Columbus discovered some scientific breakthrough – in point of fact, there were already people in the Americas for centuries before he ever showed up.

More than anything else, this day speaks to me of the danger of elevating individuals based on the stories that have been spun about them.  We want to believe that men like Columbus, Jefferson, and Washington were great men, that the United States was blessed by the Almighty from the beginning.

The problem is that these people were human and they were fallible.  Whether or not they deserve statues is beyond me (I don’t think Columbus does), but the issue that we have is that when we elevate humans to god-like status, we feel obligated to defend them, even to minimizing or refusing to admit their flaws.

I think it was just this sort of thing that the Apostle Paul was addressing when he told the Corinthians, “Follow me as I follow Christ.”  (I Cor. 11:1)  Paul wanted no statues, he only wanted people to follow the true leader.

The only one that we should deify – the only one who is truly worthy of statues is Jesus Christ.  He is the only one who did not have feet of clay.  Everyone else – generals, athletes, and even preachers -- have flaws that show up under the magnifying glass (some with out it).