The Hidden Art of Homemaking, ch. 3, Music

May7

I know a lot of musically talented people. My church is full of musical talent, and our worship leader and pianist, Hannah, encourages many people to express their musical abilities in worship and in other venues as well. It seems to me that people within the church can find many avenues for the expression of musical art without much difficulty and usually with much encouragement from others within their particular church body.

I often wonder what non-Christians who are musically gifted or people who just enjoy singing or playing an instrument do to express themselves in this way. I’m not particularly gifted in music, but I love to sing. What would I do without the opportunity to sing every Sunday in a lovely congregational choir full of people of all ages singing together? And then there’s the singing and piano playing that goes on around my house every day. Oh, I would miss so much “art” in life if I were not a Christian. With whom do non-Christians sing?

Of course, the book also talks about introducing your children to good music: classical music and hymns. I feel I used to do this with my now-grown children, but I’ve lost the habit. Now, my older children and my teens are interested in a very eclectic mix of music, everything from Les Miz to Celtic Thunder to Switchfoot to show tunes. They sing the songs of these artists and listen to them. They don’t listen to much classical music because they prefer lyrical music, as do I.

My oldest daughter is a singer with a beautiful voice, and she recently became confirmed as a Catholic. I have several questions about and issues with that decision, but one of the minor things I’ve wondered about is whether or not she’ll have an opportunity to sing, either with a congregation or a choir or as a soloist, giving the gift of her musical ability to others and in worship to God. I don’t feel as if Catholics do much singing (corporately, in worship), but you can correct me if I’m wrong about that. Anyway, I liked the ending sentences of this chapter on music as hidden art because it applies to all of us, Catholic or Protestant, musically gifted or just average, together or alone:

“For Christians, there is no need for alcohol to release our inhibitions in music-making. The reality of the Holy Spirit should free us to joyous expression in the form of melody and song. This is what is meant to be now, and what will continue in eternity. Creative creatures on a finite level, made in the image of the Creative God.”

I like the way each of reads the same chapter on music, and rather creatively, we all go off in different directions in our thoughts about the subject. Check out the linky at Ordo Amoris.

The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer, ch. 2, What Is Hidden Art?

May4

Because I have read about Edith and Francis Schaeffer’s son, Franky Schaeffer, and because I am old enough to know that there are no perfect Christian families, I can’t read Mrs. Schaeffer’s words in this book without thinking about the imperfections and cracks in her family—and in mine. As I write this post, I am listening to the sounds of a violent, not-very-beautiful video game that my teen son is playing in the living room with a friend. I can be unhappy about the disruption this game causes in my ideal “beautiful home environment”, or I can be thankful that my son is at home playing a game with a friend, that we have an opportunity to show hospitality to his friend, that my daughter was able to perform in a play this afternoon, that my other daughter was able to go to a ballet class, that those of us who are here will have a meal together, that my home is filled with books and art and music and laughter.

Of course, those things I list that I am thankful for also have elements that work against them, things that I am not always thankful for. I have to drive a lot, something which is abhorrent to my senses, to get the girls to their drama and dance classes and performances. We’re not all here as a family to share the meal this evening. In addition to the books and other good things that fill my home, I also have lots of junk and counter-artistic piles of stuff. Sometimes the yelling and the coarse joking (and the video games) drown out the music and the laughter.

Hidden Art encourages us to hold two truths in tension:

“A Christian, above all people, should live artistically, aesthetically, and creatively.”

“Without sin, man would have been perfectly creative, and we can only imagine what he would have produced without its hindrance. With sin, all of God’s creation has been spoiled to some degree, so that what we see is not in its perfect state.”

The perfect is the enemy of the good. If I wait until I can make a perfect home or even a perfect meal, there will be no one left in my home to enjoy it. Children and teens make messes and don’t cooperate with my “perfect” plans. Sometimes, even I don’t cooperate with my own plans for beauty and order and hidden art.

Nevertheless, as another wise Christian woman, reminded us, “Do the next thing.” And as Mrs. Schaeffer so aptly says, “‘If only . . .’ feelings can distort our personalities, and give us an obsession which can only lead to more and more dissatisfaction.”

Hidden Art preaches a lifestyle of doing small things to create an environment of artistry and creativity, no matter how imperfect and incomplete it is.

Go to Cindy’s blog, Ordo Amoris, to read what others have to say about chapter 2 of this inspiring book.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

Mar25

At first, there’s just darkness and silence.
“Are my eyes open? Hello?”
I can’t tell if I’m moving my mouth or if there’s even anyone to ask. It’s too dark to see. I blink once, twice, three times. There is a dull foreboding in the pit of my stomach. That, I recognize. My thoughts translate only slowly into language, as if emerging from a pot of molasses. Word by word the questions come: Where am I? Why does my scalp itch? Where is everyone? Then the world around me comes gradually into view, beginning as a pinhole, its diameter steadily expanding. Objects emerge from the murk and sharpen into focus.
I know immediately that I need to get out of here.

Unfortunately, the after-effects of Susannah Cahalan’s rare and newly discovered auto-immune disorder, Anti-NMDA-Receptor Autoimmune Encephalitis, lasted much longer than a month. Patients with this disease are often misdiagnosed and given psychiatric treatment when they really need a neurologist. And sometimes they go into a coma or die from the disease. As you can see in the video, Susannah Cahalan was given a miracle: a correct diagnosis and treatment that brought her back from madness and near-death.

The book is fascinating. Ms. Cahalan does get bogged down in some of the medical details for a few pages/paragraphs here and there, but she always comes back to human interests and how this illness affected her, her family, and the friends and colleagues who witnessed her descent into what can only be described as insanity. The fact that this disease is a physical, neurological condition in which the body’s immune system attacks the brain could be a source of hope for others who are suffering from the same disease. However, Ms. Cahalan is careful to say that the disease is rare, although maybe not as rare as originally thought, and certainly does not explain all or even the majority of cases of schizophrenia and schizoid behavior.

Brain on Fire is a readable, riveting entry in a genre that is one of my guilty favorites: memoirs of madness and people on the edge of mental illness or simple eccentricity. I don’t intend to take pleasure from someone else’s misfortune, but it helps and interests me to read about people who are “outliers”. From them, I believe we can learn what sanity and wisdom and even outlandish creativity really look like.

Blood Work by Holly Tucker

Mar6

Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution by Holly Tucker. Recommended by Devourer of Books.

“In December 1667, maverick physician Jean Denis transfused calfâ€™s blood into one of Parisâ€™s most notorious madmen. Days later, the madman was dead and Denis was framed for murder. A riveting exposÃ© of the fierce debates, deadly politics, and cutthroat rivalries behind the first transfusion experiments, Blood Work takes us from dissection rooms in palaces to the streets of Paris, providing an unforgettable portrait of an era that wrestled with the same questions about morality and experimentation that haunt medical science today.”

I like reading about quirky, little-known incidents and events and characters in history that influenced our world in ways we never knew about. Jean Denis’s transfusion experiments are just such an oddity of history. Like the space race, there was a 17th century transfusion race between the French and the British (with a few Italians thrown in for good measure) to see who would be the first to successfully transfuse blood into a human being. Unfortunately for the subjects of these experiments, the blood being shared came from animals, and the transfusions were performed under unsanitary and rather primitive conditions. The human recipients, who were being transfused to cure them of madness not a blood disease, probably didn’t actually get much in the way of blood actually transfused and generally died.

Ms. Tucker draws a comparison between these early experiments in medical transfusion and the twenty-first controversy over stem cells and genetic engineering and cloning. However, her final verdict about the lesson we are to draw from the failure of Denis’s transfusions is unclear. Is it that animals and humans shouldn’t mix? Or that the established medical authorities can be short-sighted and self-serving in their opposition to new methods of treatment? Ms. Tucker seems to say that the 17th century opposition to blood transfusion is akin to to 21st century opposition to stem cell research and that both are narrow-minded and obstructionist with no basis in fact or morality. However, the French man who was (maybe) transfused did die, and Denis, in hindsight, didn’t have a clue what he was doing. My “lesson” is that we had better be really, really careful when we start experimenting on human beings, notwithstanding all the wonders of blood transfusion and modern medicine.

There’s also a murder mystery thrown into the mix, and although the mystery added some suspense to the story, it was the least satisfying and interesting part of the book. If you’re interested in science and medicine and history mixed, you might want to try this one out. Just don’t accept all of Ms. Tucker’s conclusions and comparisons at face value.

Bad Religion by Ross Douthat

Feb24

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has written a useful, compact history of the progression of Christian thought and heresy from the rise of modernism in the 1920’s (and again in the 1960’s)to the post-WW II revival of Christian neo-orthodoxy to the dissolution of church-going, especially in the mainline Protestant churches, in the 1960’s and 70’s, to the rise of evangelicalism to the present day lapse into mostly-heresy. Of course, these are trends not absolute descriptions of every Christian or every denomination.

I say it’s useful even though Douthat paints with a broad brush, and he admits that “a different set of emphases and shadings could yield a very different portrait of American Christianity at midcentury.” This caveat extends to the entire book. Douthat makes statements such as “the message of Christianity itself seemed to have suddenly lost its credibility” (in the 1970’s) or we are a nation “where gurus and therapists have filled the roles once occupied by spouses and friends.” I read these sorts of categorical statements, and at first I agree, but then I think of all sorts of exceptions and conditions and stipulations.

Maybe this book is the sort of nonfiction polemic which is best reviewed by my giving you a chapter-by-chapter summary of the major theses of Douthat’s argument, and then you can judge for yourself whether or not the book would be useful for you to read.

Part 1 of the book is history, a brief overview of the fluctuations in faith and practice of orthodox Christianity in the twentieth century and the twenty-first.

Chapter One: The Lost World. This chapter begins with the conversion to Catholicism of poet W.H. Auden and continues with Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and Martin Luther King, Jr. as emblematic of the post-war return to Christianity and neoorthodoxy. Christian churches had the potential to become “the salt of the earth, a light to the nations, and a place where even modern man could find a home.”

Chapter Two: The Locust Years. The 1960’s and 70’s brought continued growth for conservative churches but but a crisis for mainline Protestant chuches and for Catholic parishes in the United States. “The culture of mainline Protestantism simply disintegrated,” and Catholics lost in terms of mass attendance, priestly and other vocations, and participation in almost every aspect of parish life. Douthat argues that political polarization, the sexual revolution, globalization and resulting religious universalism, and America’s ever-growing wealth combined to cause the decline in the credibility and eventually practice of the traditional, orthodox Christian message.

Chapter Three: Accomodation. Many churches and denominations responded to the challenges of the 60’s and 70 with an accomodationist message: “seek to forge a new Christianity more consonant with the spirit of the age, one better adapted to the trends that were undercutting orthodoxy.” The accomodationists, Catholic and Protestant, lost members, but didn’t simply disappear.

Chapter Four: Resistance. Other churches chose a different path: resistance to forces of modernism, sexual and materialistic hedonism, and moral relativism. Eventually, Catholics and Evangelicals found themselves as co-belligerents in resisting the “spirit of the age” and defending traditional Christian beliefs. As Evangelicalism grew, evangelicals re-engaged in politics and public life; Catholics moved away from adapting to the secular culture to the “tireless proselytization” and “moral arguments” of Pope John Paul II. However, the resistance wasn’t enough to stem the tide of heresy.

So, Part 2 of the book is entitled The Age of Heresy.

Chapter Five: Lost in the Gospels. Liberal, Dan Brown/Bart Ehrman/Eileen Pagels pseudo-Christian pseudo-scholarship encourages Americans to invent their own religion in which “no account of Christian origins is more authoritative than any other, ‘cafeteria’ Christianity is more intellectually serious than the orthodox attempt to grapple with the entire New Testament buffet, and the only Jesus who really matters is the one you invent for yourself.”

Chapter Six: Pray and Grow Rich. Joel Osteen, Kenneth Hagin, and others preach a Jesus who may not say crudely “name it and claim it” but who still “seems less like a savior than like a college buddy with really good stock tips, which are more or less guaranteed to pay off for any Christian bold enough to act on them.” I think Mr. Douthat goes a little off-course when he associates financial counselors like Larry Burkett and pastors such as Rick Warren, who Douthat admits have criticized the prosperity teaching of the Word-Faith movement, with that same heretical theology. It’s always tempting to tie everything into your thesis and make the chapter balance.

Chapter Seven: The God Within. “The message of Eat, Pray, Love (by Elizabeth Gilbert) is the same gospel preached by a cavalcade of contemporary gurus, teachers, and would-be holy men and women: Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle, Paulo Coelho and James Redfield, Neale Donald Walsch and Marianne Williamson. It’s the insight offered by just about every spiritual authority ever given a platform in Oprah Winfrey’s media empire.” God exists, if He exists, inside our own hearts and minds and souls, a subset of Me.

Chapter Eight: The City on a Hill. Of course, it’s not just the New-Age liberals who have succumbed to heresy or to heretical tendencies. “A version of (American) exceptionalism is entirely compatible with Christian orthodoxy. . . Christianity makes room for particular loves and loyalties, but not for myths of national innocence or fantasies about building the kingdom of heaven on earth.” When Christians begin to go along with the slogan “my country, right or wrong” or worse, believe that America can do no wrong, they are in danger of placing a kingdom of this world before the kingdom of our Lord.

The final, brief section of Mr. Douthat’s book is a conclusion called The Recovery of Christianity. He suggests some possible sources and models for renewal: the emerging church movement, the neo-monastic movement, church growth in the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and societal and financial catastrophe that may vindicate and make relevant again the Christian message.

I have serious doubts that any of those four events and movements will be the catalyst that God uses for revival. However, as Mr Douthat writes, “the kind of faith that should animate such a (Christian) renaissance can be lived out Christian by Christian, congregation by congregation, day by day, without regard to whether it succeeds in changing the American way of religion as a whole.” God is responsible for revival; I am responsible to live an obedient life before Him daily.

I’ve given a broad overview of a book that has much specific food for thought, challenging, even convicting, words of warning, and a few practical ideas about “how we then should live.” Recommended for all Christians, especially those who are involved in and thinking about political and cultural engagement.

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

Jan30

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard.

One of my children used to be particularly interested in naming and researching the four U.S. presidents who were assassinated: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy. This book about the life, presidency, and assassination of President James Garfield would have been above her reading level since she was only 10 or 11 years old when she had the fascination with assassinated presidents, but it definitely is full of information about Garfield and would be absorbing for anyone with a similar interest.

Like Lincoln, Garfield grew up in poverty. He became an educated man by dint of hard work and his widowed mother’s sacrifice. He married a woman with whom he shared at best friendship, and only many years later, after Garfield had an affair and then re-committed to his marriage, did the two of them become partners in love in the truest sense. This part of the story alone is fascinating, a good example for our age of love’em and leave’em. (This breach of trust and reconciliation is documented in letters that Lucretia, his wife, kept and later left to his presidential library.)

But there are several other fascinating stories in this book:
the story of Vice President Chester Arthur and his conversion from party hack to presidential promoter of honesty and civil service reform.

the saga of Alexander Graham Bell’s desperate attempt to invent a medical device that would locate the bullet lodged inside President Garfield’s body before Garfield died.

the history of medical sterilization techniques that had not yet been accepted as standard practice in the U.S., contributing to the infection that eventually killed the president.

the sad (and currently relevant in light of the attention that is being focused on random shootings after Sandy Hook) story of the assassin, Charles Guiteau, who was obviously as mad as March hare but nevertheless cunning enough to plan a successful presidential assassination all by himself.

Candice Millard also wrote the book I read a couple of years ago about Theodore Roosevelt’s trip into the Amazon rainforest, River of Doubt, and my plan is to read anything she writes in the future. Ms. Millard, by the way, got her master’s degree in literature from Baylor University. Destiny of the Republic won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

Apples Are from Kazakhstan by Christopher Robbins

Jan28

Apples Are From Kazakhstan: The Land That Disappeared by Christopher Robbins.

Apples, tulips, golden eagles, nomadic horsemen, caviar, Genghis Khan, Scythians, Sarmatians, steppes, and lots of oil, uranium, natural gas, coal, iron ore, manganese, chrome ore, nickel, cobalt, copper, molybdenum, lead, zinc, bauxite, and gold; they’re all from Kazakhstan, a country that is larger than Western Europe and well on its way to wealth and modernity since becoming independent in the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Robbins, a British journalist who first became interested in Kazakhstan after talking to an Arkansas man who was traveling to Kazakhstan to meet his internet girlfriend, spent three years exploring the country and talking to its people, including many interviews with President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The book is very pro-Kazakh, and Mr. Robbins ends up with a great admiration for Mr. Nazarbayev, who has been president of the republic for over twenty years (ever since independence). Internet sources imply that Nazarbayev is either dictatorial or slightly crazy, but Mr. Robbins’ book has none of that. He presents President Nazarbayev as the architect of Kazakhstan’s growing economic prosperity and of the country’s burgeoning democracy.

In addition to the stories of Kazakh apples and the life of President Nazarbayev, the book chronicles:
the shrinking of the Aral Sea which has been called “one of the planet’s worst environmental disasters.”
the imprisonment in Soviet or czarist gulags in Kazakhstan of some of Russia’s most famous exiles and “criminals”, including Leon Trotsky, Feodor Dostoyevsky, the entire nation of Chechnya, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
the Polygon in northeastern Kazakhstan, the principal test site for Soviet nuclear weapons.
the Baikonur cosmodrome and the Russian space program that launched most of its rockets from Kazakh territory.
the clash and the harmonization of the more than 100 ethnic groups that make up Kazakhstan today: Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukranians, Koreans, Tatars, Germans, Uighurs, and many others.

I found the book fascinating, a look at a land that is very much “off the radar” for most Americans but that may play a huge role in future world economics and geo-politics.

My interest in this country was first aroused because I have friends who several years ago adopted two children from Kazakhstan. Now I am interested because it’s a huge nation with a compelling and important history and current influence in world affairs.

What do you know about Kazakhstan?

I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Jan19

As the opara (eldest son) of the family, Kingsley O. Ibe has certain responsibilities: he must make his parents proud, study hard, and become a great man. But times are hard in Nigeria and in spite of Kingsley’s degree in chemical engineering, he cannot find a job. In spite of Kingsley’s father’s great knowledge, hard work, and superior educational background, he cannot work because of his illness, diabetes. And Kingsley’s industrious and skilled mother is losing her tailoring business because of changes in technology and the time it takes to care for his father. Kingsley’s brothers and sister need school fees and books and uniforms, and his girlfriend, Ola, “the sugar in his tea,” may not be able to marry him unless he can show the ability to support a wife and family.

So slowly, inexorably, Kingsley is sucked into the business of his rich uncle, Cash Daddy. Kingsley becomes a 419-er, breaking the law and bilking foreigners so that he can do what is right: take care of his family. (The number “419” refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud.) It’s a sad story, and the author, who lives in Abuja, Nigeria, develops the story deftly with just the right amount of sympathy for Kingsley and his plight mixed with enough detail about the heinous scams he perpetrates to make us have mixed feelings at best about this character.

The culture of corruption that pervaded this story made it a striking companion to the nonfiction book I read just after it. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo is set in Mumbai, India, where Ms. Boo spent three years researching, interviewing and observing the residents of a Mumbai slum that has grown up near the bright, sparkling Mumbai International Airport. The full title of the book is Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. There’s not much hope in the story. The central characters in the book are a family of Muslim garbage brokers who buy scavenged garbage from their fellow slum-dwellers, sort it, and take it to recycling centers to sell again. The same culture of overwhelming, near-inescapable corruption, bribery, and governmental chaos keeps the garbage pickers of Mumbai in poverty and despair just as the fictional Kingsley Ibe in Nigeria is unable to escape or retain his integrity in an environment and governmental structure that only rewards cunning and dishonesty, not integrity or even educational attainment and hard work.

I just cannot imagine living in a country where bribery is the only way to achieve a semblance of justice, where votes are for sale, and where the poor are not only poor but forced into slavery, prostitution, and degradation. I suppose I am way too middle class American WASP, but I had to keep reminding myself while reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers that this book was nonfiction, that these were real people. And while the first book, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, was fiction, the things that happen in the book were real. 419-ers exist. People who work hard to get an education are unable to find jobs in a broken economy. People are turned away from hospitals because they cannot pay exorbitant amounts of money for simple health care. People like Kingsley turn to lives of crime and extortion because they see no other way to provide for their families or to survive.

I kept asking myself as I read Ms. Boo’s book, which reads like a novel: where are these people now? The Annawadi slum was slated for destruction/removal; has it been removed? What happened to the families that Ms. Boo writes about in her book who are dependent on trash from the airport to resell for basic necessities? Did the book itself change the lives of these people in any way? For the better? For the worse?

â€œThe Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.â€

“It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they avoided. A decent life was the train that hadnâ€™t hit you, the slumlord you hadnâ€™t offended, the malaria you hadnâ€™t caught.”

I Do Not Come to You by Chance was awarded the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, first novel Africa.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo won the National Book Award in the nonfiction category for Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.

Gray Matter by David Levy

Jan16

A Neurosurgeon Discovers the Power of Prayer . . . One Patient at a Time.

This nonfiction “blend of medical drama and spiritual insight” reminded me of one of my favorite books from 2011, Praying for Strangers by River Jordan. In Gray Matter, Dr. Levy, a neurosurgeon, tells the story of how he started offering to pray with his patients before surgery, and eventually at other critical moments in their medical journey. He writes honestly about the fears involved in this experiment of faith: how he feared losing his reputation, offending patients or fellow medical coworkers, making a fool of himself, even ruining God’s reputation if his prayers went unanswered.

But Dr. Levy also tells how he felt compelled to offer his patients the gift of faithful, simple prayer before, and often during, what was for the patient an anything-but-routine procedure. And very few of his patients refused his offer to pray for them. For those who did refuse, Dr. Levy respected their wishes and went on to do the surgery with all of the skill he had. But the book focuses on the stories of individual patients who did agree to have Dr. Levy pray for them. The author tells about how prayer became for him an integral part of the treatment process and about how those prayers and God’s presence acknowledged in the OR made a difference in the lives of both doctor and patients.

I was especially encouraged to read about the importance of forgiveness and the release of bitterness on the road to physical health. Many, many people are afflicted by diseases and ailments that are caused or exacerbated by the spiritual illness that they hold onto in the form of bitterness and resentment. As Dr. Levy began to pray for his patients, he sometimes felt led to ask about their spiritual health, especially in the area of forgiveness. And some patients he was able to lead to forgive those who had hurt them and at the same time bring themselves into a place to receive healing and forgiveness for their own sins.

It seems to me that if I really believed that God hears my prayers and that He chooses to work through prayer to work in the world and in people’s lives, I would offer to pray for people much more often and then I would do it. This story of a doctor who does believe, not without doubts and stutters, but nevertheless believes and puts into practice what God has called him to do, is inspiring.

Carrie at Reading to Know just wrote a review in which she credits her mother-in-law with inspiring her to pray more fervently and consistently:

“When a situation popped up she held my hand and simply said, “We will pray.” And I did. And I know she did. Her example and exhortation was worth more to me than a pile of pamphlets, even though they may be written by Martin Luther. . . She also prays for each member of our family. And I know that her prayers are answered. I know. Her spirit of humility and committment to follow Christ was a huge spiritual wake-up call to me.”

Simply pray. Offer to pray. Pray daily. Pray through. If I believe in Jesus’ words “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I”, I will pray for those He gives me breath to encourage in that way. And my faith will grow, and God will be glorified.