Hard Candy

My mother-in- law recently sent us several sacks of hard candy by post. Inga promptly exiled them to the church office to save our children from a cavity invasion. Though I normally don’t eat hard candy, for some unfortunate reason, I decided to try a piece after lunch one day to accompany my lonely cup of tea. Although the piece I sampled wasn’t really “hard” by the strictest definition of the word (it was more of a nougat), it contained a diabolical surprise lurking in its heart. Just as I was getting used to the candy and had decided that I like it, a terrible sound akin to a steel toed boot being smashed down onto a pile of gravel emitted from my mouth. At first, I couldn’t tell what happened until I retrieved the piece of candy from my mouth along with several particles from one of my favorite molars. Come to find out, this piece of candy was wrapped around a tiny stone that I bit down on with gusto. It broke my tooth. The good news is, the tooth that broke had endured a root canal several years earlier (read – its nerve had been deadened), and, therefore, I experienced a minimum of pain. 

Thank God, our family dentist was able, with the help of a piece of re-bar for internal support, reconstruct my tooth. Her parting comment as I left her office was, “Only chew soft foods from now on!” Yes, I’ll have to remember to try and eliminate rocks from my diet.

Back On Line

I deeply apologize for not posting for over a month now. Please don’t think that I have abandoned my post. I have not. The reason for my absence from the blog-o-sphere has been my need to concentrate on finishing a book that I am currently writing. My goal is to finish it by the first of the year. It is a book that tackles hard to understand passages from the New Testament that seem to challenge the goodness of God. I love my Heavenly Father and I delight in defending and upholding His goodness and grace. When this book is finally completed, it will provide its readers with answers to almost 50 challenging verses. The book is primarily intended for Russian speaking audiences, but someday I hope to see it published in English. 

By the way, my first published book, complete with ISBN number, has just been released. Praise the Lord! It is titled, “Must a Christian confess his sins to obtain forgiveness?” Essentially, this book is a study of 1 John chapter 1. The point of the book is that forgiveness of sins belongs to us as part of our inheritance in Christ. We have already been forgiven of all our sins. Our confession today as believers should declare – “I am forgiven, in Christ!” We confess what belongs to us in Jesus. 

Well, keep checking back. I hope to wrote to you about how I broke my tooth and about my most recent traffic ticket in upcoming posts. I think you’ll like them!