Househunting and truth in blogging

So... I go into the pantry-exercise room-study to...well... study.... for the lesson I need to teach at church for the adult Sunday school class...


and I get my books all set up....

and my papers out and I start making notes.

After we finished Revelation, I wanted to do something “easy,” but he (the husband) wanted to study Job. Not my first choice of something to teach, but I am so glad he did and that I listened to him. I am learning a lot, and I hope they are too.

For the unfamiliar: Job was a very wealthy man – a good man – who lost his children and his wealth in one fell swoop, and then eventually his health; and this was a particularly devastating illness involving his skin.

Most of the manuscripts I edit are for journals that cover thoracic and vascular surgery and orthopedics, so most of the images that accompany those manuscripts are of radiographs, CT scans, MRIs, ultrasonography, or are photos taken through an arthroscope. Sometimes the pictures are operations in progress, but these do not bother me, probably because I’ve killed a lot of the meat that has ended up on our plates. I have been recently editing manuscripts for a dermatology journal, and these too come with photographs. Photographs of skin diseases. Some of the pictures I have seen are of skin diseases that are truly horrific. They make me queasy.

When poor old Job talks about his body being “clothed with worms and scabs, my skin is broken and festering,” I perhaps have a little clearer idea of what that might look like than the rest of the class. Horrific. And when his wife suggests that he go ahead and “curse God and die” she might have been thinking more along the lines of “you are suffering too much. It might be better to die and be out of your misery.”

This story gives one plenty to think about.

Just for a moment I happened to look up from contemplating this, and from the window I see a bluebird is clinging to the front of the bluebird house.

This is what it looked like. This thrills me. Yes indeed. Bluebirds are so lovely. They have set up housekeeping and are raising babies.

But you know how confession is good the soul? Well, the picture is true, but it is not a true picture. By the time I got my camera out, and turned it on, and it whirred and got in focus, the bluebird had gone inside the house and then flew out and I couldn’t sit there and wait and wait and wait for it come back again. So, I swiped a bluebird from another picture and pasted it onto my picture.

Can’t believe everything you see. The Weaver blogged about this a bit in March. Definitely something to think about.