Friday Coffee with PJ

Friday. Coffee. Sweet (not the coffee ... just the experience!). Please pour yourself a cup and join me for a couple of random thoughts.

1. "Chinese funeral parlor using 3-D printing to help the dead look their best."  For obvious reasons, this headline caught my eye. The Longhua Funeral Home in Shanghai is using 3-D printing technology to help people's dead bodies look more presentable. In addition, the article also refers to a company in California which is using the same technology to produce life-like busts of the deceased that sit atop urns containing their ashes. Once the urn is buried, the bust can be "kept on the shelf for years to come." Neither of these surprised me (although I am amazed at what 3-D printing technology is able to achieve!). But apart from the "new-ness" of the technology, the efforts of the funeral home and the urn company are nothing new. Mankind has been trying to soften the blow of death ever since people started dying. Death can't be avoided. But we can find ways to ease the pain when it does strike. For the one who has trusted by grace alone ... in faith alone ... in Christ alone, the sting of death is gone! The Apostle Paul makes reference to this reality in 1 Corinthians 15:54-58. Jesus won the victory some 2000 years ago when he bled and died upon a Roman cross. One day, we who have chosen to follow him as our Savior and Lord, will be resurrected ... entering fully into the victory that has already been won!  If you are not sure you will be a part of the victory party mentioned in Revelation 19:6-9), please take a moment to view, Two Ways to Live: The Choice We All Face.

2. I just checked the weather forecast for our area for Saturday. It calls for rain and SNOW with a forecast high of only 41 degrees! This forecast is much more fitting for a Saturday in mid February vs. mid April! But it IS spring. And there is a battle going on in the atmosphere above us. Cold air is on the retreat ... and warm air is advancing. But, just as in WW 2 as the Allied armies were pushing the German army further into Germany - the Germans punched back with a powerful counterattack (i.e. The Battle of the Bulge) - so sometimes "old man winter" punches back as well. But, don't panic (unless you happen to be a snow lover!) - the warmth will return! And so it is with the battle between evil and good. Right now it appears that evil has the upper hand. But just go to the final pages of the Bible and read the end of the story. At the end of the day (or better said ... at the end of human history) good ... and God will win out! You can count on it!

3. Update on Sharon: It's been a while since I offered an update, so I thought I would give one here and ask you to pray. Yesterday we saw the orthopedic surgeon who performed the surgery to repair Sharon's broken femur. Before seeing him, Sharon had a couple of x-rays taken. The x-rays appeared to "possibly show some healing" of the portion of the fracture that has not yet healed. But it was difficult to tell for sure (the fracture is still visible on the images). Sharon has been using a bone stimulator twice a day for the past three weeks. The doctor wants her to continue doing so. Sharon will return to see him in about four weeks. In addition, Sharon learned through a bone density test that she has osteoporosis on the right side of her body (but not her left -- which our doctor said was a bit strange!). So our primary care physician will be handling that aspect of her care. All this to ask you all to please pray that the fracture will heal. If it does not, then a bone graft will be the next step. And that is a step we would rather not take. Thanks!

Thanks for stopping by . . .
pj