Report on Lara's mother - Kerry

I am just now come back from visiting Lara's parents in Garland. As many of you probably know, Lara's mother had a cancerous tumor removed from her brain several weeks ago. She has since been in rehab and gathering her strength for the coming radiation and chemo treatments which began today.

This weekend was a pleasure. We left on Saturday night after I got off work and spent the evening talking. Sunday morning we got up early to attend the 8:00 AM retro-licious southern gospel "classic" service at Garland First Assembly at Firewheel (long name, great church). Afterwards we attended a Sunday School class whose focus recently has been a weekly dissection of Jesus' "I am" statements, this week's being "I am the bread of life." I actually felt engaged by the class, which, I am sad to say, happens rarely anymore in church. I realize that it must be at least partly my attitude that is the problem, but I also think that the Bible is just too rarely taught in church. The class began with the testimony of a man in whom I sensed a depth of spirituality that I desire for myself. His speech, while mild, was resplendant with a simple and balanced profundity deriving not from extensive education (though he did go to college) but from an actual and dynamic relationship with God.

The second part of the class was the lesson which had as its launching point John 6:25ff. The passage captured me with Jesus' response to the crowds seeking him: "Truly I say to you, you do not seek me because you saw signs, but because you ate from the loaves and were filled." What is interesting about this statement is that what Jesus says they both do and do not seek Jesus for comes down to the miracle of his feeding the 5,000. They are not seeking him because of what this miracle says about reality but because the miracle fed them. In other words, he is making an observation about their perception of reality and what they deem important as a focus of attention. They are not philosophical people, they are concerned with what they perceive to be the essentials of life. But Jesus doesn't leave them there. After making this observation he utilizes their attention to physical things to teach them about spiritual things, thus teaching that what they perceive to be the essentials are actually secondary. I don't know if I am communicating this well, but Jesus did not talk down to "simple" agrarian people as we often do in the American church. I have heard numerous ministers give their reasoning for not teaching the Bible in their pulpits, and it always boils down to a lack of faith in the real power of God's word and low expectations of either their congregation's ability to understand or their own ability to teach. Our focus on "felt needs" as a determiner of subject matter in the American church is but one of many things threatening to render it unsalty. But I digress.

We ate lunch at Fuddruckers, which I am convinced is one of the most dangerous words in the English language for those trying to have a pure speech but who are prone to metathesized consonants. I had the "Dogzilla." Nuff said.

Lara's parents both took a nap in the afternoon, leaving Lara and her grandmother to sit and chat and me to study Hebrew. Then in the evening we played Carcassonne. Today Lara's parents left early to take her mother to rehab and treatment, so Lara and I spent the morning and lunchtime with her grandmother.

Overall, this weekend was a real treat. Whereas I had thought that I might come back exhausted (as I often do when visiting Lara's family - they have a lot of energy and are constantly on the go), instead I feel energized. I am hopeful that Lara's mother with respond well to the treatment she is currently undergoing. Without going into too much detail, she is participating in a clinical study in which she is the first to have a certain additional treatment in this particular frequency and intensity. I ask everyone to remember to pray that Lara's mother does not suffer from side effects (like nausea, etc.) in a way that renders the treatment unfeasible for her.