Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground.
He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat, so you can be refreshed and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.”
“Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.”
So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah. “Quick,” he said, “get three seahs of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread.”
Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant, who hurried to prepare it. He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.
“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him.
“There, in the tent,” he said.
Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

• Genesis 18:1-10

But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.

• Isaiah 57:20

I thought I would give a little science lesson.  I know, I know.  I am a creationist, and the education system would mock me as being uneducated, my science, true science, is backed by experiments and observed data.  The science revolves around the title question.  When is a liquid not a liquid?

Okay we have three different states of matter: Gas, Liquid, and Solid.  We can dissolve air into water, but we will focus on the last two instead, liquids and solids.

If you have two things that are liquids at room temperature and they are soluble, you can mix them together.  If they do not react with each other, you simply have a mixture of the two liquids.  If you have something like an oil mixed with water, most likely, the oil will eventually float to the surface.  The two liquids have then separated.

Now, if you have a solid that is soluble in water, as an example, you can take that solid and mix it with the water.  It becomes a stable mixture.  You might do this in cooking.  The recipe might call for a little salt in the boiling water.  The salt increases the boiling point of the water, making the water a little hotter than the usual 212F or 100C at standard / normal conditions.  The barometric pressure can also change the boiling point, but we can talk about that another day.  But the point here is that when you boil off all the water, you will have a residue of the salt in the pot.  The mixture is stable, but in changing the water from liquid to a vapor (gas), you do not evaporate the salt.

Now what if the solid does not completely dissolve, but the liquid remains a liquid, for the most part.  That is where an emulsion comes in.  Take the milk in the first Scripture.  Milk is an emulsion.  What is, or where did, curd come from.  Abraham offered his guests, one being the Lord, milk and curd.  The curd is cheese.  Cheese comes from the milk after it separates.  So, the emulsion is not stable like the salt in the water.  Let it stand, and you get separation.

Now, for the second Scripture comes into play.  You have mud and mire.  In the Bible, they seem interchangeable, but mire today is more like a swamp or swampy water.  Mud is just water and soil mixed.  In other words, you step into mire and you might get your feet muddy, but you might get algae or other plant life on your feet, not just mud.

So, what is mud?  It could be a mixture, an emulsion, or suspended solids in a muddy liquid.  Mostly it is all three at the same time.  The suspended solids will quickly drop out of the “slurry” as soon as the mixing action dies down.  Then you have some solids that will settle after a while, like milk separating.  But often, you still have water that is a bit “cloudy” with some of the solids having dissolved.

Why bring all this up?

In yesterday’s post, I spoke of an incident where the doctor had refrained from telling me the entire story six months ago.  They did an ultrasound in my groin area.  They found a cyst.  They did two blood samples.  Both together showed that I did not have cancer, one being a common pregnancy test.  The enzymes and hormone that they were looking for, the evidence that a male has cancer, were not present or at least negligible.

That is all great news, but they wanted the same tests run six months later.

Was it that I just had good medical insurance, or was there something else?  The doctor said he was being thorough.  A second test would confirm the first.

Why this discussion of when a liquid is not a liquid?  A cyst is liquid.  Cancer is a solid mass.  But what if the cyst looks like it is not all liquid?

The doctor was being disingenuous.  I had lost my wife just weeks before.  What if the doctor said, “The cyst has a cloudy or muddy liquid in it which might indicate cancerous growth that the blood tests do not pick up yet.”  That might be a bitter pill to swallow, or I might give up on life in order to join my wife in Heaven sooner rather than later.

Nope, the doctor sent me home with a clean bill of health.

But, praise the Lord, the next ultrasound showed a clear liquid, no hint of suspended solids.  The doctor insists on one more six-month test and then shifting to yearly tests since one of the two previous was “suspicious.”

And forget taking pain medication or other medication.  The pain is drastically lessened by wearing better underwear, and I only bought one pair of the expensive stuff that advertises on television.  That did not work.  I bought something online for just pennies per pair more than the common brands.  Another reason for praising God in that I already take too many pills.

But I take all this in stride.  If I am physically able, I will continue writing, but even then, Matthew Henry passed away before he finished his commentary and his assistants had to finish the work for him.  Now, to find the right person who can continue to write…

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.