Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

So he said to him, “Go and see if all is well with your brothers and with the flocks, and bring word back to me.” Then he sent him off from the Valley of Hebron.
When Joseph arrived at Shechem, a man found him wandering around in the fields and asked him, “What are you looking for?”
He replied, “I’m looking for my brothers. Can you tell me where they are grazing their flocks?”
“They have moved on from here,” the man answered. “I heard them say, ‘Let’s go to Dothan.’”
So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan. But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.

• Genesis 37:14-18

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

• Matthew 28:5-7

In each case in the Scriptures above, the people were not finding someone where they looked.  Joseph went where his brothers were supposed to be grazing their flocks, but they moved somewhere else.  They knew Joseph would give a bad report.  At best Joseph’s brothers bent the rules, if not totally trashing the rules.  In the case of the ladies going to finish the burial preparation on Jesus, an angel told them that He had risen.

What made me think of this was having a Foley bag on one end of a long tube and the other end attached to a catheter inside me.  To prevent infection, the Foley bag had to be hung above the floor, not even touching the floor.  And I had to be above the Foley bag so that urine could not backwash inside me.

But with a long tube, some of the tube was below the Foley bag.  Thus, unless there was a lot, the low spot in the tube would fill.

So, now you start with me, and you start lifting the tube so that the low spots can drain into the bag.  But if you do not watch what is going on, you can end up doing what you are trying to prevent, getting old yellow liquid back into me.

Why?  Basic fluid dynamics, but something that rarely comes up in graduate level fluid dynamics classes.  I know, I took one of those.

When you pump water and the other end of the hose is open, the water sprays out the open end.  When you want to put the hose away, you unhook the hose from the water source.  You hold up one end of the hose, and the hose quickly drains out the other open end.  One of those times when gravity is your friend.

But what if it is a small tube emptying into a Foley bag that is sealed?  The fluid will do something that you might think is impossible.  You hold the tube up and you look at the top of the liquid bubble in the tube and it does not move, but do not start lifting the next section.  You are “looking in the wrong place.”  Look at the bottom of the liquid bubble.  To me, it is fascinating.  In an open system, you never think that as the water drains out one end, air is rushing in the other end.  In a closed system, the air has to leave the Foley bag, or an empty space in the tubing and travel up while the liquid travels down.  In fact, it almost looks like the liquid is disappearing, replaced by air from lower in the tube, until you look at the new low spot in the tubing, and the liquid is making yet another liquid bubble.  When the air reaches the top of the bubble, there may be a couple of tiny droplets that are left from the surface of the liquid that seem to pop. The liquid has moved to a new low spot, until that low spot is the Foley bag. If you do not watch this phenomenon, you will move to the next low spot, thinking you took care of the first one, and the system will work in reverse, putting the yellow liquid back inside the patient. Because this is only by gravity and nothing is being pumped it is rather slow.

Maybe it is just me, but that was about the only entertainment that I found enjoyable during my last couple of hospital stays, and it was neat having the education to explain the phenomenon.

But how often do we search for God in the wrong places, our career goals in the wrong places, and I could go on.  Prayer should be high on our list.  And then, with a calm clear mind, we might eliminate half the places we might have looked.  And as for looking for God, pray harder.  Besides reading the Bible, you are already in the right place, your prayer space.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.