smelling salt

what a strange era we live in. fairly spectacular. the innominate vietnam vet who i sat next to on the plane ride home from georgia brought this to my attention. of the thousands of years that civilizations have risen and fallen... of the billions of people who have lived lives, thought thoughts, been irritated by their little sisters, stubbed their toes, sweated and pee'd and coughed up unidentifiable but gratifying chunks of phlegm, and suffered harrowing losses and pain, we are the ones who live in the twenty-first century in america. what are the odds? we are not one of the half-the-world's-population that makes less than two dollars a day. we don't worry about drought, or warring tribesmen, or whether or not we have contracted AIDS yet. we don't spend time being concerned that we cannot feed our children today. our houses do not have dirt floors. it's as though we have won the anthropologic lottery. correspondingly, we get perturbed when there are sticky spots on our kitchen floors. we frown at the water streaks on our dishwasher-washed glasses. we sigh with real disappointment when it's time to change the oil again in our cars. we make thousands of dollars every year, and just want a little bit more. are things as screwed up as i'm suggesting?

so a running start on our last few weeks: in abilene, we dropped in to old navy (that place that all of us gap-generation folks shop, hoping nobody sees the tag, hoping they all think instead that our clothes are from the gap... or maybe even banana republic). we found this bear outfit, and because we were too cheap to buy it for halloween (which i don't really get into anyway), we just put julia in it and snapped a photo. it was totally unforgettable. squeeziness and oozy goozy baby loving to the max.

so then we came home for four days, and thereafter left for atlanta, georgia, where i was attending some pediatrics lectures. we chose atlanta because it is so close to lance and ashleigh kelley, erin's brother and his wife. they are incredibly cool people, and totally dear to erin and me. lance is working on his PhD in clinical psychology at auburn university (which, if you're interested in academic prestige, is actually saying quite a lot), and ashleigh is a volleyball coach at the largest high school in alabama (and an elementary school p.e. teacher at the same time). the picture is of the two of them and julia. it was hard to leave their hospitality.





coming home, though, provided the much-anticipated encounter with the new hobbs baby, rebecca dianne. what a beautiful girl! what a biologic miracle. a gazillion dna purines and pyramidines, listed in perfect order, calling together amino acids to stick together in just the right combination billions and billions of times over to make protein after protein after protein. proteins forming tissues and tissues forming organs... and then, a heart that pumps! arteries directing red blood cells that carry oxygen to the web of neurons in the brain that in turn send impulses to the hands that grasp! eyes that have sight and a nose that actually smells! and the product is entirely composed of mark and jennifer hobbs. it blows my mind.


So wrapping up: Jesus was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only Begotten, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.