Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”
Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’”
She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.

• 1 Kings 17:12-16

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

• John 20:28-29

On the day that I wrote this, I threw my large, 8 ounce, squeeze bottle of lemon juice in the trash.  I already had a new one.

In fact, I had purchased the new one about two weeks before the old one was empty.  I had shaken the old one.  It felt empty, but it made a splashing noise that told me there was only a couple of doses left in the bottle.  I went grocery shopping the next day and bought a new bottle, but two doses per day for nearly two weeks before the lemon juice ran out.

Was my estimate off?  Absolutely.  I learned that the sound of that kind of splash, when there is very little in the bottle does not indicate empty, but within a couple of weeks it might be empty.

Why do I use so much lemon juice?

A Urologist told me that the pH of my urine was too high and the citrates in my urine were too low.  Fixing these two things might reduce my propensity to make kidney stones.  I have had six procedures over the past two winters to remove kidney stones, four of them invasive which led to taking antibiotics to fight prostate infections.  Whether I had those infections or not is questionable.  I desperately want to avoid those medical procedures this year.

The doctor’s solution was for me to squirt lemon juice into two bottles of water to start each day.  Okay, I averaged more than one bottle each day, but I never measured how much lemon juice I used either.  Acids lower your pH.  Lemon juice contains citric acid.  So, ingesting a source of citric acid should increase the citrates in what you evacuate, and the pH should be lower.  Two benefits from each squirt of lemon juice.

When this post comes out, I will know the next day whether the experiment worked.

But at first, I thought I was having a heart attack.  I have GERD.  A doctor told me nearly forty years ago that I would die of a heart attack. I would think it to be my usual heartburn from GERD and ignore it.  This pain that I experienced was something that I could not ignore, but at the same time, I felt I could not take antiacids, because that would increase the pH, defeating what the urologist wanted to see.  For a while, I took extra medicine to reduce the stomach acid that I was producing, but I finally got used to the lemon juice.

I pondered at the time that fixing one thing causes something else to go bad.  The antiacids and the occasional ice cream, soothed the heartburn, but they set the kidneys into a frenzy making more kidney stones than my system could get rid of.

I guess that is a cautionary tale to remind all of us that doctors just practice medicine.  To them, it is practice, but to us it is a matter of getting well, not getting well, or the cure is worse than the disease.

But back to the lemon juice.  The bottle is opaque.  You cannot see into the bottle.  I wrote about this once before when I could see into the bottle of laundry detergent and I could estimate only a week’s worth of laundry detergent.  But then I stretched the laundry detergent for a month.  In this case, it was about two weeks, but my estimate was based on sound not sight.

With each of those cases, I remembered the story of Elijah and the widow.  Her jar of oil and her jar of flour did not run out until there was rain in the land and the drought was over.  The widow heard Elijah’s proclamation of what God had said.  She believed it.  She lived it, by making bread for her, her son, and Elijah until the drought was over.

Have you ever had something happen that made you remember a miracle in the Bible?

It does not have to be a miracle.  God has gotten your attention with something that might have been you poorly estimating the level in the jar.

But God has a way of reminding us that He is actively working on our behalf in this world by making something so undeniably similar to a biblical miracle that we begin thanking Him for His provision.

Remember the Bible Stories and then look for the details in life.

God is in the details.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (modernist architect)

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.