Planted In The House Of The Lord

After conducting a series of interviews with elderly people, author Don Gold published the book Until the Singing Stops: A Celebration of Life and Old Age in America.

Gold loved and admired his grandmother, and it was the memory of her that moved him to meet and learn from other elderly people. He recalls that on the way to one of his interviews, he got lost on a dusty country road in Missouri. When he pulled into a farm to ask for directions, a teenager came up, listened, shrugged his shoulders, and then replied, “Don’t know.” So he drove on. A few miles farther down the road, he stopped again at a farmhouse. The farmer, who was an old man, graciously gave him flawless directions.

Perhaps, Gold mused, that experience sums up what he was searching for when the memory of his grandmother sent him out to find people like her. He was looking for someone to guide him in his life journey.

If you’re “young,” seek out older people who have been drinking deeply from God’s love and goodness throughout their life. They have wisdom to share that will help you so that you also might flourish and grow in your faith (Ps. 92:12-14).

Dear Jesus, take my heart and hand, And grant me this, I pray: That I through Your sweet love may grow More like You day by day. —Garrison

Fellowship with Christ is the secret of fruitfulness for Him.

http://odb.org/2012/07/24/planted-in-the-house-of-the-lord/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+odb%2Ffeed+%28Our+Daily+Bread%29

The Fight for Life Encompasses the Beginning and the End

In nations where socialized medicine has been in force for some time, the elderly and infirm are being sacrificed (killed) for the comfort of the young and healthy. And with the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold socialized medicine in America via ObamaCare, there is justifiable concern that the elderly and infirm may eventually face the same fate here in America.

And, no, this is not a scare tactic.

To give you some perspective, in the United Kingdom alone, upwards of 130,000 elderly patients were quietly led to a faster death last year through the Liverpool Care Pathway—an avenue to death that has come to be known as the “death pathway.” This pathway can include the “withdrawal of treatment—including the provision of water and nourishment by tube—and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.”

According to Professor Patrick Pullicino, a National Health Service consultant, thousands of these persons were killed not because they were at death’s door, but “because they [were] difficult to manage or to free up beds.”

Pullicino says the death pathway was originally “designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent,” but the threshold for “easing” such person out of this world via euthanasia has obviously been lowered a bit.

This has necessarily created a scenario where elderly and infirm patients who do not have families to monitor the treatment they receive can be killed off by the state without so much as whimper.

In one example related by Pullicino, a 71-year-old Italian man who could only speak broken English, was placed on the death pathway against his family’s wishes after his doctor gave him only 14 months to live. Through Pullicino’s advocacy, the gentleman was taken off the death pathway and did indeed live for 14 more months.

There are two quick lessons to be grasped in this look at the UK’s socialized medicine structure and the consequent experiences of the elderly and infirm persons trapped within it.

For starters, notice how the proponents of death use language to mislead those who are facing death. Thus, the “pathway to death” itself, which includes starving persons for 33 hours while denying them water, is ushered in via the Liverpool Care Pathway.

Secondly, note that once permission to kill for convenience (or “to free up beds”) is given to the state, death becomes imminent and we grow numb to the tragedy of death.  That is the very outworking of a culture of death rather than a culture of life.

Therefore, it is critical that we not allow the battle for life to be limited to a battle solely against abortion.  Many of the same members of the culture of death who seek to stamp out life in the womb are also ready to kill life in its twilight.

We must fight against the one as fervently as we’ve fought against the other, for in the end, life itself is worth defending, regardless of whether the person possessing it is in the womb or in the nursing home.

Alan Sears

Alan Sears, a former federal prosecutor in the Reagan Administration, is president and CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal alliance employing a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

http://townhall.com/columnists/alansears/2012/07/12/the_fight_for_life_encompasses_the_beginning_and_the_end/page/full/

Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town

One afternoon I stopped by the bank to make a few deposits. I was in a rush and needed to get in and out as soon as possible. I had places to go and things I had to do. I picked the worst possible time of day and the worst day of the week to do my banking. But I had been out of town and needed to catch up on errands before the weekend began.

There was only one teller working and the line was about fifteen people deep. After waiting patiently, I got close to the front of the line. Looking back at the dozen or so people who had entered the line after me, I was relieved that the wait was almost over. Unfortunately, the elderly woman who was making a deposit was requiring a lot more assistance than the others who had gone before her.

She must have been 85 years old. She held a cane in one hand and wore a thick pair of glasses that were visible only after she peeled away her sunglasses. They were the kind of sunglasses that fit over her regular glasses and were big enough to block harmful rays from even the nastiest of solar eclipses. They were the kind that retirees used to wear to watch shuttle launches in south Florida. The kind people older people wear when they are consumed by practicality and no longer care as much about fashion.

When she was finally finished with her transaction, she started to make small talk with the teller behind the counter. She did not seem to notice that there were so many people in line behind her. The teller smiled and nodded at everything she said. The old lady told her she reminded her of her daughter. Then she asked the teller whether she had children. She just kept making conversation while the young woman behind the counter provided her with full and undivided attention. She seemed to feel sorry for her. It was as if she appreciated sitting where she was rather than occupying the elderly woman’s shoes.

But there was a younger man in the line who did not feel the same sympathy for the old woman. He glared impatiently at the teller as if to say that she should tell the elderly woman she was holding up the line. He even held out one of his hands and waved at the teller. He was signaling that he had been waiting long enough and that it was time his needs were met. But the teller kept nodding politely and giving the elderly woman her undivided attention.

Someone should have said something to the younger man who was so impatient. He should have understood why the elderly woman was clinging on to the conversation with the young teller. It was probably more than a reminder of her children. More likely, it was a reminder that she had not seen them or talked to them in quite some time.

As soon as she finished talking to the teller, the elderly woman walked out of the bank and headed across the parking lot towards her car. She was walking slowly and labored with every step as she leaned upon her cane for support. She had no one to help her. No husband. No son. No daughter. There was nothing to lean on but a cane.

The younger man who had been so impatient with her needed to hear my pastor talk about the time our church went caroling at the old folks’ home about a year and a half ago. He needed to hear the stories of the elderly people whose lives had been enriched by hearing songs sung to them by people who had never met them before. He needed to hear that elderly people are a treasure and not an inconvenience.

Of course, my pastor was not there to tell him. But I was in the bank that day. In case you haven’t figured it out, the impatient man in the line was me.

I should have dropped what I was doing and given the woman a hand as she made her way across the parking lot. I should have made plans to go back to the retirement home to spend a few hours of visitation. Like you, I probably won’t make it back until Christmas. I have places to go and things I have to do.

Mike Adams

Mike Adams is a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Feminists Say the Darndest Things: A Politically Incorrect Professor Confronts “Womyn” On Campus.

http://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2012/04/27/elderly_woman_behind_the_counter_in_a_small_town/page/full/