I am becoming a lizard person. Or maybe I've always been one, like those lizard people who disguise themselves as humans in the alien invasion movies, and my inner-lizard is just now emerging. I am shedding my human skin for a rough, scaly appearance, slithering around my room and hissing, though with displeasure rather than renewal. Perhaps, as in the Rick Yancey novel, The Fifth Wave, I have not even been particularly aware of my alien-ness, or lizard-ness, until I was reactivated by the alien ship that had placed me here in the distant past to be a part of the invasion when the time was ripe.
The sensation of intense inner heat I have had, and which I have mentioned before, has suddenly gotten much worse, such that it seems to be causing a red, dry, painful plague on my skin from shoulders to forehead. Looks and feels like I have a sunburn, but lizards don't get sunburns, and neither do people who spend most of their time in their room because they don't feel well enough to go outside. The pills the neurologist had given for what he takes to be a neurologic problem associated with multiple sclerosis, are no longer effective. I now continue 24 hours a day to burn inwardly as if I were about to experience internal combustion. What a way to go! I have left a message with said neurologist, but he has not answered, no doubt thinking Oh God no, not this lunatic again.
I feel like I've been cursed with the plagues of Job, and, like Job, I can't help but ask why, because I ain't done nothing wrong! Well, not so wrong, anyway, as to deserve seven plagues. And anyway most of my wrongdoing was accomplished years ago, when I was still young, more or less, and had the requisite energy. I mean really, God, are you going to choose this time to punish me when I've basically been minding my P's and Q's for so long?
In his book Disappointment With God, which I just happen to be reading at this time, Phillip Yancey devotes many pages to the book of Job, and many more to the contemporary trials that people go through--good people who have done nothing wrong. He addresses all the age-old questions (as old as the Bible, as old as the Book of Job): Why is this happening? Did I do something wrong? Will you be distant and silent forever? Is prayer empty and ineffectual? Why do evil people thrive while good people suffer? God, are you even there?
I say that Yancey addresses these questions. He does not answer them, any more than the Book of Job answers them. The only palatable answer, I suppose, is to appreciate, or at least acknowledge, that the difference between our perspective and God's perspective is akin to the difference between the perspective of a microscopic creature on a lab slide and the man looking through the microscope. God lives in all dimensions of creation, and then beyond even those dimensions. God is creation itself, and more. Infinitely more. Why does God neglect to answer Job's questions? Perhaps it is because, as Yancey suggests, we could not possibly even begin to comprehend the answer. It's not a very satisfying conclusion, or even a very helpful one. But maybe it's the only one possible until we see not through a glass darkly, but face-to-face.
*Note: The drug prescribed for this intense inner heat, as well as other weird neuropathic amusements, is Pregabalin (or Trileptal).
The sensation of intense inner heat I have had, and which I have mentioned before, has suddenly gotten much worse, such that it seems to be causing a red, dry, painful plague on my skin from shoulders to forehead. Looks and feels like I have a sunburn, but lizards don't get sunburns, and neither do people who spend most of their time in their room because they don't feel well enough to go outside. The pills the neurologist had given for what he takes to be a neurologic problem associated with multiple sclerosis, are no longer effective. I now continue 24 hours a day to burn inwardly as if I were about to experience internal combustion. What a way to go! I have left a message with said neurologist, but he has not answered, no doubt thinking Oh God no, not this lunatic again.
I feel like I've been cursed with the plagues of Job, and, like Job, I can't help but ask why, because I ain't done nothing wrong! Well, not so wrong, anyway, as to deserve seven plagues. And anyway most of my wrongdoing was accomplished years ago, when I was still young, more or less, and had the requisite energy. I mean really, God, are you going to choose this time to punish me when I've basically been minding my P's and Q's for so long?
In his book Disappointment With God, which I just happen to be reading at this time, Phillip Yancey devotes many pages to the book of Job, and many more to the contemporary trials that people go through--good people who have done nothing wrong. He addresses all the age-old questions (as old as the Bible, as old as the Book of Job): Why is this happening? Did I do something wrong? Will you be distant and silent forever? Is prayer empty and ineffectual? Why do evil people thrive while good people suffer? God, are you even there?
I say that Yancey addresses these questions. He does not answer them, any more than the Book of Job answers them. The only palatable answer, I suppose, is to appreciate, or at least acknowledge, that the difference between our perspective and God's perspective is akin to the difference between the perspective of a microscopic creature on a lab slide and the man looking through the microscope. God lives in all dimensions of creation, and then beyond even those dimensions. God is creation itself, and more. Infinitely more. Why does God neglect to answer Job's questions? Perhaps it is because, as Yancey suggests, we could not possibly even begin to comprehend the answer. It's not a very satisfying conclusion, or even a very helpful one. But maybe it's the only one possible until we see not through a glass darkly, but face-to-face.
*Note: The drug prescribed for this intense inner heat, as well as other weird neuropathic amusements, is Pregabalin (or Trileptal).
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