Lessons for preachers…

First off, can I say that I have no ministerial background (or seminary as it is in the US), nor any theological training, so I fully appreciate my ‘arrogance’ in trying to teach any self respecting minister how to practice his skills or approach his preparation for the sermon he will preach on Sunday.  

I’ve listened to a lot of different sermons over the past few years primarily through use of SermonAudio which is a tremendous facility for those of us not always able to get out to church every Sunday.   And today listening to the “White Horse Inn” who provide a Christian talk show I heard a superb comment in respect of how any minister should approach their preparation for their sermon – before they determine whether it is suitable to preach they should ask themselves “Does the content of this sermon require that Jesus had to be crucified for it to be valid?”   The hosts were discussing primarily those churches which now tend to preach more of a social gospel, where Jesus may not even be mentioned, let alone be provided as the answer to the needs of those who’ve not yet met Him.   But I thought the point was superb, and would truly hope many ministers and pastors do read this and take it on board whenever they’re preparing what they desire to speak on.

Feline nonketotic hyperosmolar diabetes – a curable rarity…

Just as a digression from my normal content of posts, I figured this one might be useful to do since it’s such a rare occurrence and also something which at one time I tried vainly to gain useful information on.

In 2001 my then 10-year-old cat Inka became suddenly and seriously ill fairly rapidly. However, when I looked back I could see there were warning signs which I’d ignored or put down to other circumstances. He was one of two outdoor cats, so when I noticed that I had to replenish the water bowl more often than usual I tended to put it down to the warmer weather or the fact that they were both on a purely dry food diet. He’d always been somewhat of a greedy cat too, so when he started looking for food more often again I just ignored it as I was trying to keep his weight to a reasonable level as he was already a barrel despite being on diet food and never leaving the back yard (unlike his brother who did). He was also a very nervous cat who didn’t take well to changes and if memory serves me right he’d just coped with a lot of stress through my having building work done in the couple of months prior to his illness. I had to go away for 3 or 4 days in May that year, and my brother was looking after him, but while he felt Inka was perhaps a bit off colour he equally didn’t see anything majorly wrong with him. However, the minute I went outside I did – Inka was totally out of it, semi-comatose, unable to lift his head or walk – really on the brink of death which was a total shock. The vets immediately assessed him as being in shock but as their initial tests didn’t indicate diabetes it took a while before his blood tests returned to show that his blood sugar was horrendous – 35 mmoles/L (in UK units a normal value would be 4.5-7) and thus I was warned his chances of survival were very slim. The next day after they’d made a lot of enquiries throughout the UK, they diagnosed him as having the rarer form of NKHO diabetes and stated that he was at that time one of only 4 other cats in the UK with the condition, and that up to that point, most others diagnosed with the condtion tended to die within the first week. However, he not only made it past the first week, but went on to be discharged home to me two weeks later, at which point we both had to deal with daily ear pricks and blood tests, as well as continually high blood sugars and equally high insulin doses. Six weeks later we were still battling not only with his DM but also his worsening asthma and general poor condition through being stuck indoors in a small room for weeks on end as he needed to preserve his energy for recovery.