Friday, March 8, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Sugar in the blood
Return O Israel, to the Lord, your God; you have collapsed through your guilt.
Blood sugar is a good thing, until it’s not. Diabetics I or II (like me) get to know this narrow band of medical information as a matter of survival. Hypoglycemia at its extremes (below 54) is how you might die in your sleep, unaware that your body is shutting down. Hyperglycemia, when the test strips show numbers in the 400-500 and higher range, means your body is dehydrating and edging toward a diabetic coma.
So every day I take at least one blood sugar reading, using a neat portable pin pricker and all its accessories. I showed my numbers, which the monitor keeps inside itself for a month or so, to my doctor yesterday, and he was pleased. Yesterday’s number, 127, was typical of what the monitor showed. Once I changed my diet and began taking the right pill (Jardiance 25).
But before that we looked at numbers like 465 (on Feb 6) and 90 (on Feb 8), fluctuating silently and wildly inside me. Last week’s blood tests on other stuff looked stable and barely normal, and the blood sugar numbers hovered around 150 after the February crisis.
“This looks good,” Dr. Deem said. And then he repeated, “This really does look good.” Like he was surprised, and grateful to my body and its Maker for preserving me into another few months.
“We’ll get more blood tests in July,” he said. “Don’t mind me if I’m a little paranoid. Your doctor needs to stay nervous about your health. We can only do so much. Keep up the good work.”
When you’re approaching 75 and know your body is wearing out, that’s what you want to hear. I can do a better job exercising, and I will, although optimism doesn’t make that happen, only the daily habit, which is still being set.
You are not far from the Kingdom of God.
With those words Jesus might mean I’ll be dead soon, or he might mean I’m moving into his kingdom on earth, where he walks with me beside still waters and lies down with me in green pastures. Either way he is restoring my soul. And I’m breathing in the air of heaven.
If only my people would hear me, I would feed them with the best of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would fill them.
Walking virtually into the House of Representatives last night did not encourage me at first to breathe in the air of heaven. On the other hand, the lawmakers have at least banned smoking (since 1896). I was struck both by Steven Colbert’s tongue-in-cheek appreciation of President Biden and his speech, and by David Brooks’ description of former heroes of the cause of democracy, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.
Toward the end of his opinion piece, Mr. Brooks wrote, “We’re floating upon a pessimism bubble. The underlying realities do not justify the bearish mood … We need a leader with a vaster and more generous patriotism …”
We shall say no more, ‘Our god’ to the work of our hands; for in you the orphan finds compassion.
Just as with the managing of my blood sugar, I can do only so much to keep my ship floating on the sea. I was made, and I did not make myself. I am kept, and I do not keep myself. I came from God, and to God I will return. Hear these words now in the middle days of Lent, these truths that comfort us bring us peace.
(Hosea 14, Psalm 81, Matthew 4, Mark 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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