What is your role?

Greetings, In reading the news reports about the helping in Haiti I came across one that was discussing whether or not the physicians who are hired by the tv networks to cover Haiti can really do that in a non-biased way when all of them they mentioned had applied their medical skills and calling to the hurting there.
One was doing a report on people staying in a park and was found out to be a doctor and taken to a woman in a difficult labor. He called is OB friends in the US and they urged him to get her to a hospital immediately and they medi-evac her to the necessary facilities.
Others, pediatricians, neuro-surgeons, all specialties have done their medical work and then reported on it. Un biased. WHO CARES.
When a physician reports about the physical needs of people I expect her to do so with the eye of the compassionate physician. That they step in and help where they have
special knowledge is only reasonable and expected.
Let us keep in our thoughts all who are there that whatever their deepest gift is can be used for the Good of the Kin-dom.
God abide
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2010

Haiti

Driving home yesterday I looked over at one of the landmarks I've made for myself on the trip home. It's an old home, no windows, doors, and from one angle you can see straight through it. I've watched it these last 10 years as it has fallen down little by little. There had been a porch, a barn next to it, other things that made it more like someone might put it back together.
Yesterday as I drove by I looked and there was a white goat standing on the porch. I had to turn around and see it again and when I had made the circle and looked it was true...a small white goat. Oh for a camera with a good lens. But I can see it in my mind.
Why was it there? To my memory there weren't or hadn't been goats around that area. Cows had been there but they've been moved off too.
Something winsome about it though.

And I thought of that house when I've been reading about the tragedy in Haiti. So many homeless and hungry.

The earthquake that hit Haiti was shallow and it shook sideways. Not the up and down undulations that many quakes show on the surface. Houses, even solid ones, are not built to stand this kind of earth-action. The quake was 6 miles from the surface under the Capitol.
Echos of hymns being sung in the streets near the encampments of those without homes were a reminder of the strength of these people. So many without homes, SO many without loved ones, so many without water.
I have been keeping updated on the Presbyterian Church's website, www.pcusa.org PDA Presbyterian Disaster Assistance -with the information they receive from our mission workers and co-workers there. There are ways to give that the donations go through already established channels without the concern of funding being 'lost".
How can we ask others to be compassionate if we are not?
And who put that goat on the porch?
God abide
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2010

Epiphany How's with you?

The clerk at the drug store asked me this question, "how's with you?" I said that I was fine. But it is an odd expression. How is --what with you? Perhaps it is just such a general statement you can fill it in just however you want. How's your health? How's your family? How's your car? How's your spirit? It can go on and on.

Humm though..perhaps it is a better question than it seems at first. We can be ok in one sector of our lives and silly rotten in another. We can have some things all lined up like ducks in a row and other things that reminds us of herding cats. Still, really, do those things external from our person really make up how we are? Our wellness is more in line with how we feel about ourselves in the great scheme of things.
Do we feel like things aren't going together right within ourselves
or do we feel like we have the important parts
of our lives at peace? Wholeness. Shalom
I believe that peace can come when we understand that we belong to God. I believe that when we accept that God has claimed us and named us and gifted us with attributes to be applied toward the Kin-dom then we have peace.

God bless you this new year in finding the pieces that make a, How's with you, easy to answer...peaceful.

God abides
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2010

Weather Alert

My computer has a weather alert. We live in Oklahoma and we need to keep watch for tornadoes or threatening weather. It signals with a thunder roll. On more than one occasion it surprises me or someone in my office visiting.
It rolled today. Bitter Cold. Dangerous cold. Wind Chills in the sub-zero range. (I put on my sweater even thought the cold doesn't come in till Wednesday night.) That is dangerous cold. Our church has heat. Our homes have heat. We will all be fine...
Oops no We won't all be fine.
We know this because someone broke into our storage shed on Christmas Eve. They didn't take anything. I think they slept there. It was a blizzard. It strikes me as very much of a Christmas story that there was no room in the shelters...so they found some shelter in the shed. This strikes me hard. "No room in the Inn" I've read that somewhere. Oh right, the Gospel of Luke.
We'd like to help this person find good housing. Find safe housing. Find warm housing. But we don't see him. We see what he leaves here and there. What aren't we doing right?
I've been thinking it's a Matthew 25 year for me...When did I see you hungry, or cold, or without a coat, or....

God bless us ALL
God abide
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2010