A Very Happy Christmas To You All - AND A Happy New Year; Welcome 2013

Well, Christmas has come round yet again . . . . .  and so quickly!  I must be getting old, for time seems to travel much faster these days - and accelerating!. It seems like yesterday we were putting up our Christmas Tree and hunting around for replacement bulbs for our Christmas Tree lights. You may all know and have experienced this no doubt . . . . they seem most elusive and when found are never the right ones.

I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year - may 2013 be kind to us all.

I have been absent from BlogLand for a while because my dear wife, Mrs Bluelights, has experienced a set back regarding her health.  Most of you will know that about 15 years ago my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy, removal of 22 lymph nodes (9 of which were cancerous), chemo-therapy (a course of 6) and radio-therapy.  She was prescribed a hormone therapy drug, Tamoxifen, which she took for 5 years, then she was discharged. Unfortunately in 2008 secondary breast cancer was diagnosed in some of her bones.  This was contained by taking Tamoxifen but only for 2 years because the drug became ineffective and replaced by another hormone therapy drug which lasted only a year, then another which failed  We were very down and worried but the consultant reassured us that they had plenty more tricks up their sleeves.  By that time the cancer had spread again to the edge of her liver and progressed further into more bone areas.  She was in so much pain it was awful seeing her suffer like that and this coincided with our daughter's wedding in August, spoiling it to a degree.  I remember having to find a wheelchair after the evening reception to get her back to our accommodation. It was simply dreadful for her . . . and for me to see her like that. So after another consultation with the specialists, unfortunately she has had to undergo another course of chemo-therapy and has just completed no 4 out of 6 sessions which is a bit of an ordeal for her.  The good news is that after chemo 3 a new CT scan shows significant shrinkage of the invading 'nasties'. The consultants are delighted with her progress.  The other good news is that we have friends praying for her all over the world and she is on many, many church prayer lists, again all over the world.  We are sure this has had a lot to do with keeping this evil thing at bay for so long, that plus her determination . . . . plus our hope and, most important . . . .  our faith.

Thank you all for your prayers . . . they are so valued. We know that nothing is impossible for God and He does listen to our prayers and answers them in His own way and in His own time.  We cannot make Him cure her but we ask him to do so.

So Christmas is here once more and I took this photo of a crib at a local nursing home:

Soon we shall be celebrating Jesus's first advent, born in His humanity to be with us for 33 years - although many of us are longing for His second Advent when He shall appear in glory and full majesty.  But first time round the King of the universe actually humbled Himself to be with us, to give us hope, to die for us and to provide Salvation for everyone who wants it.  This little baby was here in his humanity, yet in His Divinity he was holding the whole universe together.  His presence in our lives has helped us so much with my dear wife's illness and we are so fortunate to have Him in our hearts. Unfortunately He is missing from so many hearts and I recently found some quotations from well known atheists, spoken on their death beds.  When they were young they were so fit and well and even very happy, witty and wise, but we all know when we are young we think we are immortal:

I shall quote just one which is so disturbing I just had to share it with you.  This is the sum total of how he viewed all humanity, including his life.  His name, Mark Twain:

"A myriad of men are born, they labor and sweat and struggle for bread. They squabble and scold and fight. They scramble for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon them. Infirmities follow. Shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities. Those they love are taken from them and the joy of life has turned to aching grief. The burden of pain and care and misery grows heavier year by year. At length, ambition is dead. Pride is dead. Vanity is dead. Longing for release is in their place. It comes at last. Death, the only un-poisoned gift earth ever had for them. And they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence, where they achieved nothing, where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness, where they have left no sign that they have existed, a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever. And then another myriad takes their place and copies all they did and goes along the same profitless road and vanishes as they vanished to make room for another and another and millions of myriads to follow the same arid path through the same desert and accomplish what the first myriad and all the myriads that came after it accomplished...nothing."

I don't know about you but I found this to be utterly stunning and incredible that anyone can come to the conclusion that this is the total sum of their existence - total failure and nothing - and this by a man of such great genius and intellect.  If only he knew that here on Cosmos Diabolicus, as I call it, we can use just 5% of our brain power - some a little more, some a little less, but we will one day we operate at 100% efficiency - imagine that, when everything will make sense to us and when we shall all be blissfully happy.

I can quote other famous atheist men who at the end of their lives came to similar conclusions but time does not permit me to expand on this here. However,  I read somewhere that atheism is much harder to believe than Christianity.  In mathematical terms to be an atheist and to explain creation one has to believe that:

Nobody x Nothing = Everything

as opposed to:

Somebody x Something out of Nothing = Everything

I suggest the second formula is much easier to accept than the first.

I compare Mark Twain's spoken word to the death of my own mother and her unspoken words, as a believer.  She did not have to say anything - her actions were much more vocal than mere words. She had been unconscious for a number of days in hospital after a tragic illness.  She awoke one morning and fortunately my sister, Maggie and I were at the hospital by her bedside.  We could converse quite well with her and she could converse back, but then she drifted back into unconsciousness.  She awoke a few hours later in the  afternoon, looking in my direction, but I thought not directly at me - perhaps just behind me.  I have never seen such a wonderful and loving smile on any face. It was as though someone standing right behind me had come to collect her and take her to paradise. After that moment we knew our real mother had gone and only her shell remained in her bed.  I often wonder whether this person was my father . . . . or maybe Jesus Himself.  Perhaps one day I shall know when it is my turn to make that journey.