Karen Will Lose Her Right Eye. - Comments (0)

Category: Behind the Lines
Author: John Malone
Date: 24th June, 2007 @ 01:27:03 AM

Monday afternoon, my wife Karen will be losing her right eye to ocular melanoma by surgical means.

I would hope that all of my friends, near and distant, would pray for her about that time.

Karen was diagnosed with this malignant cancer six weeks ago. For all we know, she has had a tumor growing in her eye for decades. On the other hand, it could have been only for years or months.

We are greatly puzzled by all of this, and are seeking God’s will and glory in the matter.

Karen is truly remarkable through all of this. Very courageous. She actually is taking in much better than I am.

We do not know what this holds for her and our future, and we will not know much more about her condition for another week, when the pathology reports come back to us.

Karen and I have 24 grandchildren with 2 more on the way.

Needless to say, this has had an enormous impact on our lives, and we continue to look for and share the grace of God in this life.

We continue to hold on to the {Scripture|Psa 118:7} God has given us.

Dealing With Doctors. - Comments (0)

Category: Articles,Behind the Lines
Author: John Malone
Date: 19th May, 2007 @ 03:11:40 AM

“The Lord helps those who help themselves,” the physician told us.

My wife and I looked at each other, but she only saw me with her left eye.

That’s because she has lost nearly all vision in her right eye, a large “choroidal ocular melanoma” obscuring almost all vision in her right.

I do not often mingle with doctors.

My father died from cancer at 65 – when I was 36 – largely at the hands of incompetent physicians.

One of my very best friends became an M.D., but our relationship was built upon our fellowship in the Scriptures after I had led him to Christ while he attended medical school at the local Jesuit institution.

He died from cancer when he was barely 42.

My next door neighbor was a brilliant neurosurgeon. We used to talk about technology, medicine, and the Scriptures. We were real friends. He died of cancer when he was 45. Before he did, he was restored to his early faith in Jesus Christ, and wrote hymns on his Alabama death bed.

One of my heroes, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, began his radio career after cancer treatments, and went home shortly after my father.

Since those men were taken home by the Lord Jesus, my only contact in the “medical world” has been a brilliant research physician who is remarkably unorthodox, and a chiropractor: someone distinctly NOT in the “medical world.”
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My Wife - Comments (0)

Category: Articles,Behind the Lines
Author: John Malone
Date: 8th May, 2007 @ 10:46:37 PM

Today my wife was diagnosed with a serious malady.

I am asking my brothers and sisters who read this web site to pray for her in this matter.

The Lord is able to deliver her.

And me.

======

We are grateful to the Lord today to learn that my wife’s (Karen’s) prospects, though very serious and damaging, are not as dire as they could have been.

The Lord is taking our part with {those that help us.|Psa 118:7}

Seung Hui Cho, Video Games, Sorcery, & Babylon. - Comments (0)

Category: Applied,Articles
Author: John Malone
Date: 21st April, 2007 @ 05:00:30 PM

Suddenly, our mind-share is diverted to the grizzly and gory meditation of a non-virtual, first-person shooter named Cho Sueng Hui, in a life-is-just-like-animation scenario.

Cho demonstrated a many features of demented – let’s call it depraved – human nature. Extreme violence, “religious preoccupations,” a Messiah complex, obsession, schizophrenia, mania, withdrawal, flat affect.
This guy exhibited, apparently, all sorts of behavior that we have come to categorize as pathology with various labels.

There was a certain knowable – even predictable – psychology about this fellow, and that knowledge on the part of others will no doubt be the stuff of lawsuits in and around Blacksburg Virginia for some years to come.

I actually don’t have much to say to add to this discussion, and I won’t boor you with regurgitations of the obvious, or for matters not directly observable by me.

However, there are three matters about this fellow that disturb me that I haven’t read or heard much about.
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Apostasy: Capital Punishment in Nebraska. - Comments (2)

Category: Applied,Articles
Author: John Malone
Date: 5th April, 2007 @ 06:07:32 AM

Here’s a chronicle of a local instance of apostasy, and an observation of the {mystery of inquity|2Th 2:5-8} working.

Here in Nebraska, we have another death penalty controversy going on, fronted by newly appointed chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Brad Ashford, who has taken over for Ernie Chambers in that capacity.

Chambers has attempted to end the death penalty in Nebraska every year he has served in the legislature. That is now well above 30 years.
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Lent. No Thanks. - Comments (52)

Category: Applied,Articles,Roman Catholicism
Author: John Malone
Date: 24th March, 2007 @ 05:56:29 AM

One of the practices I left behind when I received Christ as Savior 32 years ago was the keeping of the “Lenten season.”

The wholesale adoption of this Roman Catholic version of ancient pagan practice by what was once Protestantism is indicative of the {departure|2Th 2:3} that marks our day.

Now let me be clear here: I have no qualm with anyone’s religious practice, within civil bounds. If someone wants to re-enact the weeping for Tammuz, or some other pagan practice, I consider them free to do so.

My issue with “Lent” is the Christianizing of it: the attempt by ignorant or dishonest men to sell the practice to the unsuspecting as if it had to do with faith in Jesus Christ.
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Working Out Loud. - Comments (0)

Category: Articles,Doctrine
Author: John Malone
Date: 3rd March, 2007 @ 06:02:25 AM

The secular life is marked by compartmentalization.

One has his “spiritual life.” His “business life.” His “family life.” His “financial life.” His “private life.” His “personal life.” His “professional life.” Perhaps this carries on ad inifinitum.”

I’m reminded of a popular humorous television seires which once featured a character whose life was so dichotomous, he claimed: “You see, right now, I have Relationship George, but there is also Independent George. That’s the George you know, the George you grew up with — Movie George, Coffee shop George, Liar George, Bawdy George.”

“If ‘Relationship George’ walks through this door, he will kill ‘Independent George.’ A George divided against itself cannot stand.”

While the humor in those remarks is rib-tickling, it is so because that is so much of the way we live our lives, masking our private person with a publc persona that is framed to favorably impact whoever we are attempting to impress.

The spiritual life, marked in the Bible, has no such distinctions of persona, no such compartmentalization, no such vanities of impression. God’s exemplary servant, {the chief or protos sinner … the pattern or hupo-tupos for the rest of us, |1Ti 1:15-16} for the rest of this dispensation.
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