I have a date tonight

.... with my Pharmacology book.

over coffee...

You make it so easy to become your friend
you exude love, warmth, friendliness, confidence...

Do you know in the Bible, when Paul tells Timothy not to let anyone look down on him because he is young?
I pray that for you!
I pray that you would not let your age hold you back.
You have so much potential to be a leader,
to be an example to everyone around you, in
love
life
faith
speech &
purity

your passion for the Lord is contagious, and
your compassion for the lost is inspiring.

I can't wait to see who you end up with... this man will have to be rock-solid in his faith, and he will have to match your intellect!!!

you're absolutely stunning, Iulia-
a natural beauty and you don't even know it!

thank you for opening up your world to me, and thank you for trusting me.

I can't wait to discuss more with you...

when we meet again to talk,

over coffee....

oh snaps!

The Beth Moore Conference was AMAAAAAAAZING!

The Lord uncovered so much this weekend.

Friday night she talked about living out our lives in relevance- our life on this earth is so quick, like a vapor... we should be intentional with every moment we have. We only have one turn at life on earth... only one turn to fulfill God's purpose. I learned about progressive revelation... which means that God slowly reveals His will to us throughout our lifetime... Psalm 119:105 "Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." She held out her hand in front of her as if to hold a lantern -to illustrate that we can only see so far in front of us.

Living a relevant Christian life is like walking on a tightrope- sometimes we have the tendency to fall to the left, into CARNALITY (when we allow the world to get into us) and sometimes we fall to the right, into HYPERSPIRITUALITY (self-piouty). We must always pray that God keeps us on the right track!

Some of my favorite Beth Moore quotes from Fri & Sat:

"To grow in Christ means to grow in love"

"If you don't follow hard after God, you will follow hard after something..."

"Do not stop until the enemy gets caught in the snares that he's set for you!"

"Sometimes God uses our pain to birth our passion"

*sigh*

Everyday God amazes me more and more....

Brrrrr!

I find myself complaining a lot about the cold weather... grumbling under my breath about how the winters in Chicago are awful, and what a pain it is to have to warm up my car every morning. But you know what? The winters here are always going to be cold. And I don't plan on leaving Chicago any time soon. So I thought and thought for days, "what can possibly be good about this?" And one evening, while taking a piping hot shower, while my skin was thawing from being outside... while all my tensions and worries were temporarily melting away... I realized that if I lived in California, or Hawaii, I would NEVER fully enjoy a steaming hot shower as much as I do here. I would never TRULY appreciate a huge mug of hot chocolate. I would never completely appreciate sitting in front of a fireplace... or snuggling under a comforter with a book to read.

So there it is. Cold weather is great! Thank you God for Chicago winters!


*******************************************************
3 days till the Beth Moore Conference!!!
3 days till Spring Break starts!

Intelligent design

At the hospital this week I cared for a 96 year-old woman that had abdominal surgery. As expected, her body reacted with an immediate inflammatory response to the invasive procedure- she had a slight fever and her white blood cell (WBC) count was very high. If you're wondering, she recovered beautifully. But this experience- and every clinical experience for that matter- points me to God.

The human body is amazing- in the ways that it maintains itself and works to maintain homeostasis. It truly is magnificent, the way that your body systems communicate with each other, the ways that your body reacts to pain, the automaticity of the beating heart... the mechanisms by which it achieves all these. And these WBCs that are the first line of defense, do you know that millions of them will swim through your blood stream when you have an injury? They have so much responsibility to protect you, to keep you safe. They have so much purpose.

I am so sorry, but I refuse to believe that living things "just came to be". How can someone look at something in nature- something as irreducibly complex as the body- and still believe that millions of years ago, from NOTHING, "it just happened" that the right elements at the right time at exactly the right temperature reacted to form matter, which evolved over time to form what we see today??!! To me, that's so much more outlandish than believing in intelligent design!

The next time you look up at the stars on a clear night, or stand at the edge of the ocean and marvel at its vastness, or admire the daisies growing in your backyard, just please consider the possibility that these things were created and designed oh-so carefully by a Glorious, Holy, and Perfect God. It is His display of his glory in nature that renders every living being without excuse- Romans 1:20 "..for since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they [mankind] are without excuse."