20160202 – Tuesday – Don in Hospital

My friend Don Strempel has been in hospital for the last couple of days. He has not been feeling well and was feeling a tingling down one side of his body. Una thought it best to take him to hospital rather than to ignore his symptoms. He went to Flinders Medical Centre and they checked him out thoroughly and now he is home with instructions to rest and not to drive for a fortnight.

He is not the only one who has been unwell recently. Cumberland ecclesia has a number of members who are not traveling well at all at the moment and they had a special meeting to pray for these members.

I too have been to the doctor today to review my sugar levels and my diabetes related health issues. I can remember a time when for me, old people did not exist! I never saw them. I never noticed that some people walked with the aid of sticks and walkers and such.

Now, wherever I look there is an old person struggling to cope and to live a “normal” life. I look at friends of a similar age to myself and I mentally assess them to see if they are okay and worry about their health as well as my own.

Una Strempel, Adam and Peter Schwartzkopff and Don Strempel are all dear friends of mine

I was born in 1939, at a time when not too many babies were being born because the war had just started and large numbers of women were not having babies because their menfolk were involved one way or another, in the war effort.

After the war, around 1945 the men were back and there were babies being born in large numbers. In later years, these babies would grow up and be called, “the baby boomers.”  These baby boomers all around me are now growing old. One one by one they will die and sooner or later, so will I.  It takes a lot of adjustment to accept and adjust to this.

I am so glad that I have a hope, the hope of Elpis Israel. With my whole heart I believe in the second coming of Jesus when he will set up the Kingdom of God on this earth.

I am so gratefu l that I don’t have to despair when I see my friends growing older.

If there were no resurrection, no second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, then I would be “of all men most miserable” but instead, I will “lift up my head and rejoice because my redemption draws nigh.”