Lynn's status - COVID 19

As of 1/4 9:30 PM

Life is returning to normal.  While Lynn is still on the oxygen at times, she can come off of it to work in the kitchen and can do other tasks with the oxygen.  She still gets tired more quickly than before, but it seems just a matter of time before her energy level returns to normal.  I'm going to stop updates here, as I don't think that there's anything more that needs special attention.  If things change, I'll get word out.  Thanks to everyone who has been tracking Lynn's health, praying for her, and offering assistance; you all have been a great encouragement to us.

As of 1/4 9:00 AM

Lynn got good sleep without the oxygen concentrator and woke with blood oxygen at about 93.  After resuming use of the concentrator, it's back up to 97.  She ate breakfast at our normal place and seems to be doing well overall.

As of 1/3 10:00 PM

Lynn's blood oxygen got up to 98% briefly, even at setting 2 of the oxygen concentrator.  I expect that we'll try removing the oxygen tomorrow and see how she does.  She's started to get a little stir crazy and has begun doing a few things around the house, which is excellent.

As of 1/3 11:00 AM

Lynn woke up somewhat draggy, with lower blood oxygen, but within an hour it was up to a good level.  She's able to eat normally at this point, and feels like her progress is slow, but discernable.

As of 1/2 7:25 PM:

Lynn's blood oxygen was up to 97%, so we turned down the oxygen concentrator from 2.5 to 2.0.  She is eating normally, but food tastes "off" (not surprisingly).  Otherwise, she's doing well.  Thanks to Paula Clevenger, who delivered a large El Pollo Loco meal, which will give us a few days of leftovers.  She, Dana Chisholm and family members have kept us well supplied.

Another note from some friends of ours:

We got our test results back last night and we too are Covid positive. Bob is struggling the most on account of his other diagnoses, and while not seriously in trouble, as in shortness of breath, pain, etc...his pulse ox is also not keeping up. So this morning we came to ER on the recommendation of the Kaiser nurse...and we’re here now. He’s on O2 at the moment and being worked up for all other things as they usually do. His other main symptoms are achiness when the fever rises, but none higher than 100.8 so far and his asthmatic cough...truly he feels he has the flu with asthma exacerbation.  But the numbers say otherwise. We do hope to get some treatment help before leaving today but will keep you posted.

Sorry to lay this on you when you are concerned for Lynn...but Bob wanted to reach out for prayer support from the group as well.

PS for Grace group...Bob is now in hospital. They found patchy double pneumonia and a blood clot in one lung. He is being moved to Kaiser Irvine tonight as there were no beds in Anaheim. He feels pretty well, and is glad to be able to sleep in a proper bed tonight, once in Irvine. Thanks so much for your prayers.

Lillian

As of 1/2 9:15 AM:

Lynn had a decent night's sleep on oxygen, woke refreshed, had a normal breakfast.  Temperature of 98.4, blood oxygen 96.  All in all, looking quite good (except that the dog didn't want to come home from his walk).

As of 1/1 4:30 PM:

Lynn is home with home oxygen, antibiotics and steroids.

As of 1/1 12:10 PM:

St. Jude's is working on setting up home oxygen for Lynn.  It is possible that she will be discharged today, but that isn't certain at the moment.

As of 1/1 7:45 AM:

Lynn had a decent night's sleep (with some help from a painkiller).  Her fever seems to be gone and the headache with it, which is really nice.  During the night her blood oxygen went low and she was put on oxygen support but that was removed before morning.  It is painful for her to inhale too deeply.

As of 12/31 7:00 PM:

Pneumonia seems to be responding to a round of steroids and antibiotics, now she's being monitored.

As of 12/31 6:30 PM:

Hospitals are not known for being great places for a good night's sleep; pray that she sleeps well anyhow and is really rested in the morning - this has been difficult for her lately even at home.

As of 12/31 5:00 PM:

Lynn is in her room and feels better after having eaten something.  Her blood oxygen was measured at 94, which is considerably higher than it was this morning.

As of 12/31 2:30 PM:

A room has been designated for Lynn and they're preparing to move her into it.

As of 12/31 12:00 PM:

The doctor reports that x-rays indicate that Lynn may have some pneumonia.

As of 12/31 11:00 AM:

Lynn will be admitted to St. Jude's when they can get a room for her.  The ER is very crowded. 

As of 12/31 9:00 AM:

I took Lynn to the Emergency Room at St. Jude's this morning.  Her blood oxygen level was too low and wasn't coming up.  She had no fever when admitted, and had been able to eat most of a breakfast of two eggs and a slice of toast.  Her cough continues to bother her and she continues to feel lousy, but she managed the preparation well.  No other symptoms we could see.

Merry Christmas 2020

 For many of us, this Christmas season has been marked by a painful loss of traditions that highlighted the season in years past.  Gatherings with family or friends are either difficult or impossible and many concerts and other community celebrations have either been cancelled, or else were livestreamed to be "celebrated" at home on one's couch with no real connection with those with whom we are purportedly celebrating.  Those of us whose jobs have been labeled "non-essential" may have found that limited finances prevent them from buying the gifts they long to give.  And some of us may have lost people we cared about to COVID-19.  Add to all this the recent spikes in COVID-19 cases and deaths and the political and social turmoil which have characterized 2020, and it can be hard to say "Merry Christmas!" with any enthusiasm, let alone look forward to a "Happy New Year" in 2021.

But if we look at the Christmas story as told in Luke 1-2 (which we have been reading this month as part of Grace's Scripture reading plan), we see a picture that resembles our situation more than we might have thought.  Chapter 2 begins with an imperious decree from a distant ruler (does this sound familiar?) that everyone was required to travel to their ancestral hometown to be counted as a part of a census.  For Mary and Joseph, this could not have been a welcome demand, with Mary being so close to term.  If they knew their Bible, they might also have remembered that God did not always approve of a king demanding a census of his people (see 2 Samuel 24).  Nevertheless Joseph and Mary did what was required of them and made the trip from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem to join the mass of people who had all been forced by Caesar's command to make the same trip.  While Mary's cousin Elizabeth had delivered her baby three months earlier at home surrounded by family and close friends (Luke 1:57-58), Mary delivered her baby in the only place they could find, an animal stall, isolated from all of their friends and family.  And when they went to Jerusalem to fulfill the requirements of the Law regarding the birth of a child, the prophet Simeon warned them that Jesus was a sign that would be rejected by many and that a sword would pierce Mary's own heart (Luke 2:34-35).  He was joined by the prophetess Anna, who spoke to those who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem (Luke 2:38), which would not turn out at all as expected for those who thought that it meant Jerusalem's liberation from Roman rule.

And yet, the message that the shepherds brought from the angels who visited them to Mary and Joseph was one of "good news of great joy" (Luke 2:10).  Under the burdensome decrees of an unjust ruler, in an animal stall in a strange town, away from family and friends, with the prospect of alienation and pain in their future, Mary and Joseph were still to know great joy, for to them (and to us) was born a Savior who is Christ the Lord.  This Lord, they would discover, would not overthrow their unjust ruler to take his throne, nor would he save them from loneliness, hostility, and persecution.  Instead he would give them joy beyond all these things; the joy of the resurrection (see Luke 24:50-53).  Mary expressed it in her song in Luke 1:46-55, the shepherds voiced it in Luke 2:20, and Simeon spoke of it in Luke 2:29-32.  God was becoming one of us in the person of His Son, who would save us from sin and all suffering by transforming them through His resurrection power into eternal life and a joy that will make all the hurt that we have ever endured seem insignificant in comparison.  Oppression, poverty, suffering and death may burden us, as they did Jesus, but if we recognize what Jesus has accomplished for us in His resurrection, they will lose their sting because through the resurrection God has promised to work all these burdens for our good and His glory (see Romans 8:28-29).

So if we find ourselves struggling with loneliness, oppression or fear, we can be assured that, far from being experiences that are alien to Christmas, they were there at its inception.  But joy was there too, a joy that God intends for us to experience as well.  God wants us to be firmly convinced, as the first disciples were, that no matter what trials we endure in this life, if we rest in the resurrection power of Jesus to transform them, they will in the end become beautiful trophies of His grace that will bring us great joy.  If this is our confidence, then we will be able to truly and sincerely wish each other a Merry Christmas, for this is the day that God gave us Jesus, who would turn all of our sin, sorrow and suffering into joy, and a Happy New Year, for this is another year in which we have an opportunity to participate in the resurrection work that Jesus is doing in and through us for His glory and our good.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Galatians 4 - my attempt to translate/paraphrase it in contemporary English.

I tell you that if a young child inherits an estate, he has no more authority over it than a slave even though it all belongs to him.  Instead, he is under the authority of people appointed to care for him and the estate until he reaches maturity.  So also, when we were spiritual children, we were under the authority of the world's basic rules for human behavior.  But when the right time had come, God sent his Son to be born like one of us, born of a human mother, under the authority of God's basic rules.  The Son was sent to emancipate us from our slavery to these rules so that we could be adopted as God's children.  Now that you are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, so you, like the Son, can call out to him, "Daddy, Father!".  Instead of being a slave, you are now also a son, and because of the work of God's Son, our Champion, you also are one of God's heirs.

 

Before you knew God, you were slaves to things which are not really gods at all.  But now that you know God and he has become intimate with you, why would you abandon him to become slaves again to those weak and pathetic things?  You act as if the most important thing is to properly celebrate the various holidays.  I am afraid that all the work I have done for you might have been wasted.

 

Please, fellow teammates, join with me as I have with you.  Far from rejecting me, the first time I preached the Good News to you (though you could easily have despised me because of my illness), you received me as a messenger of God, or even as Jesus our Champion.  There was joy in you then, and, had you been able to, you would have even plucked out your own eyes and given them to me.  Are we now enemies because I have told you the truth?  The teachers you are now listening to enthusiastically pursue you, but not for a good cause.  They want to alienate you from me, so that you may pursue them alone.  Enthusiasm is only good when it's for a good cause, and then only if you keep it up when I'm away.

 

My dear children, I had thought that I was finished with the labor of bringing you to birth in Christ, but it seems that I have to do it all over again.  I long to be with you, so I wouldn't have to talk this way.  What happened to you?

 

Those of you who want to be bound again to follow God's basic rules, do you realize what those rules say?  In the authoritative writings we read that Abraham had two sons, one born of a servant and one of a free woman.  The servant's son was born by human effort alone, but the free woman's son was born as a result of God's promise.  These are physical representations of spiritual truths, for they represent God's two covenants.  The servant woman, Hagar, represents Mount Sinai in Arabia, where God's people were bound under the authority of the covenant to live according to his basic rules.  She is like the old Jerusalem, and those who still seek to live by those rules are her spiritual children and so are bound in slavery like her.  But the free woman, Sarah, is like God's heavenly Jerusalem, set free by God's promised new covenant and the mother of all who have been so freed.  And there will be many of them, for God tells us in his authoritative writings: "Celebrate your family, you childless single woman who has never given birth, for you will have more children than the married woman."

 

Like Sarah's son Isaac, we, fellow teammates, are children of God's promise.  But then as now, the child born solely of human effort persecuted the child born by the work of God's Spirit.  But the authoritative writings say to us "Send away the servant and her son, for the son of the servant will not inherit with the son of the free woman."  And we, fellow teammates, are not spiritual children of a servant, but of the free woman, with the inheritance that follows.

Colossians 1 - my attempt at a paraphrase/translation in common English.

1. Paul, appointed by God as a representative of the Champion, Jesus, together with Timothy our teammate,
2. to the Champion's faithful teammates in Colossae:  May you know the gracious acceptance and peace of God our Father.
3. Whenever we pray for you, we thank God, the Father of our Commander, Jesus the Champion,
4. for we have heard about your confidence in the Champion Jesus and your love for his team,
5. Your confidence and love spring from the anticipation you have for all the good prepared for you in heaven, which you learned about from the authoritative source, the Good News,
6. which is changing lives throughout the world even as it has changed your lives since you truly grasped the message of God's generosity
7. which our much-loved coworker Epaphras delivered to you.  He serves the Champion faithfully by serving you
8. and has told us about the love God's Spirit has created in you.
9. Ever since he told us, we have asked God in our prayers to give you all the spiritual wisdom and understanding needed to fully know His will,
10. so you will be able to live the kind of lives that reflect well on the Commander, pleasing him in every way, accomplishing all the good that he intends, and coming to know God better and better.
11. May the Father, out of his magnificent resources, strengthen you with all the power you need to joyfully and patiently persevere,
12. as you thank him for allowing you to share in his team's shining inheritance.
13. He has rescued us from the control of darkness and placed us under the rule of the Son he loves,
14. who has freed us from our debt by securing the forgiveness of our unmet obligations to God.
15. Though we can't see God, His Son, whom he has placed in charge of creation, shows us what God looks like.
16. For through the Son and for his sake God created everything in the spiritual and physical realms, whether visible or invisible, including every kind of spiritual power.
17. The Son is the foundation of everything, and he holds everything together.
18. He is the head of his team, the church.  Everything has its beginning in him, including life after death, so he towers over everything.
19. Everything that God is, the Son also is,
20. and it was by bleeding and dying on the cross that the Son ended creation's rebellion and made peace between God and his creation.
21. You, who were part of that rebellion, rejecting God and doing what he hated,
22. are included in the peace that the Son made through his death on the cross, so you are now clean and innocent and fit for God's presence---
23. if, of course, you keep relying confidently on the Son to secure for you the good that is promised in the gospel that was announced to you and to all creation, the gospel that I, Paul, serve.
24. This service involves suffering for your sake, which I am glad to do, for it completes the work that the Champion's suffering did for the sake of his team, the church.
25. God gave me the responsibility of serving you, his church, by fully and accurately delivering to you his message,
26. which reveals to us, his team, a secret that has been unknown until now.
27. God has decided to tell us that he is offering something of immeasurable value and beauty to everyone regardless of nationality, namely the presence of the Champion in them, enabling them to look forward with anticipation to all of the good that heaven offers.
28. We tell everyone about him, doing our best to warn and encourage them, so that we may present them as well trained members of the Champion's team.
29. I work hard at this, laboring with all the energy which he pours into me.

A plan for helping the homeless

My plan is like a salmon ladder. Getting salmon over a dam in the river in a single leap is impossible, but give them a series of smaller steps that they can take and they can get into the lake above. So my steps from unemployment toward self-sufficiency would look something like this:

1) Set aside safe areas (a fenced-in field, parking lot, or the like), for homeless tents so they're not living on the streets. Patrol those areas to keep them drug free and minimize crime. Provide latrines, showers, basic medical care (particularly addressed towards eliminating substance addictions) and food. Periodically clean things up so that vermin aren't attracted. Men and women (with children) would be given separate safe areas. Anyone found sleeping in any other public place would automatically be taken to one of these safe areas and given an 8x8 piece of ground where he can put his stuff and sleep for the night.

2) Evaluate all of the people in the safe area for their potential to take on responsible living. Those who are capable of doing so would get jobs doing the work that the area requires (preparing food, cleaning the latrines, patrolling the area to minimize the crime, etc). As payment for their work, they would get to sleep in a small (8x8) private room (like a KOA camper cabin) in the safe area with a bed and space for their possessions and would get a small stipend with which they could purchase items they need. Mothers with children would be given a double room with beds for the children.

3) The people living in the rooms would be coached on caring for their private space and faithfully doing their jobs. Any personality traits that would make it difficult for the person to hold down a job would be addressed and, if possible, resolved. If the person was successful caring for his space and doing his job, he would be given job skills training and assisted in applying for available jobs that require those skills.

4) Upon getting a job, government funded housing would be obtained for the person close to the job site and public transportation. If necessary a portable tiny home (like this: https://www.thespruce.com/super-affordable-tiny-homes...) would be set up for the person in a nearby parking lot. While living in this housing the person would save up for a deposit on an apartment and to purchase a car (if needed).

5) Continued periodic counseling would be supplied to help the person deal with any other issues that might arise and plan for the future. At the end of one year (more or less), the person would either begin paying for his housing (if it is a permanent apartment not the tiny home) or move into a place of his own.

Only step 5 has a specific timetable associated with it. A person could stay and any of the lower steps for as long as necessary or desired. If someone proved incapable of living appropriately at any step, he would be dropped back to the next lower step. People who dropped out of step 1 would go either to a mental institution or to jail, depending on their reasons for dropping out.

How to destroy a society

• A group with a socially unacceptable lust/desire/passion is identified (or identifies itself).
• Their lust/desire/passion is renamed with a term that has a positive spin and lacks the connotations/baggage the old name had.
• Any known harm caused by the lust is minimized/papered over or spun as a reason for pity, and anything that can be construed as a positive attribute of the lust is magnified.
• The group dominated by the lust is defined in terms of the lust, and it is deemed an essential part of their character.
• The lust group is identified as a minority group and so subject to protection.
• Any social resistance to the lust is defined as oppression, so the minority group is now considered to be oppressed.
• Any opposition to the lust or efforts to remind people of the known harms of the lust is deemed to be hate speech or lust-phobia and thereby suppressed.
• People who oppose the lust are labeled as prudes, bigots and/or oppressors.
• Advocates of the lust self-identify with previous successful and popular liberation groups so as to legitimize their own efforts.
• People in academia publish papers that declare that the lust is actually healthy and a normal part of human society and therefore to be supported and encouraged.
• Exercise of the lust is defined as a human right, and thereby subject to human rights protection.
• Government support is given to the exercise of the lust, in the form of tax benefits, special protections and other endorsements.  Existing programs are specifically amended to include support for the lust.
• Tolerance education is formalized to instruct people (including young children) on how to support and advocate for those possessed by the lust.
• People who still refuse to endorse the lust are subjected to mandatory tolerance education and threatened with loss of employment, deplatformed, or otherwise ostracized.
• Businesses that do not endorse the lust are sued, boycotted, threatened with loss of certification or tax exampt status (if relevant), and slandered on social media.
• Schools adopt tolerance education as part of their curriculum and train up children in tolerance of the lust.

Repeat until done …