Ain't Complicated

This excellent piece over at PoliPundit reminds me of my Mexican friend LS:

Consider the case of two men, “Oswaldo,” and “Vikas.”

My Christian friend in Mexico has tried three times to get a visa to visit the US. He’s not trying to get up here to work or live. Just to visit two or three weeks, or less.

But the officials at the American Consulate in Hermosillo (Sonora) reject him as soon as he answers “Yes” when asked if he’s ever been in the States illegally.

His father brought him to the US as a minor.

He lived here long enough to learn English quite well.

Now that he is an adult (a ripe 22 years old or so), he refuses to do the easy thing: Lie.

So the Americans send him on his way, not even listening to the details of his case.

Thus no US visit for LS. Not even to attend his childhood friend’s wedding. That friend is RR, my oldest son.

God bless LS for his commitment to His Law as well as to man’s laws.

Be sure to read what Mr. Gaffney has to point out:

The Congress has received lots of free advice lately from Mexican government officials and illegal aliens waving Mexico’s flag in mass demonstrations coast-to-coast. Most of it takes the form of bitter complaints about our actual or prospective treatment of immigrants from that country who have gotten into this one illegally — or who aspire to do so.

If you think these critics are mad about U.S. immigration policy now, imagine how upset they would be if we adopted an approach far more radical than the bill they rail against which was adopted last year by the House of Representatives — namely, the way Mexico treats illegal aliens.

It seems I pointed that out in an earlier post (Two Southern Borders)

The above article is far more in-depth and substantive and documented than whatever little I took the time to write.

From the BBC:

The three-year-old girl stopped breathing and turned blue when she got stuck between the rubber handrail and a side partition at the H&M store.

From WorldMagBlog:

Rarer than a solar eclipse! Rarer than Hailey’s Comet. On Wednesday, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning . . . .

Maybe it will come.

Maybe.

Don’t count on it!

This fellow acknowledges some limits in his study, but it’s interesting nonetheless:

If you’re planning on a church funeral when you die, a new study suggests you can delay it by up to 3.1 years if you attend church regularly as opposed to waiting for a priest or pastor to say final words over your casket.

And that’s only for church attendance?!

What will throwing yourself into the “program” do for you?

And what if your church attendance and activity reflect a wholly-surrendered commitment to Jesus Christ?

That was a year ago.

No, I didn’t think it was good news that she was dead.

But that’s how too many people viewed it then. And likely still do.

I wonder what her perspective is on the matter.

I assure you, she does have a perspective on it.

The headline is “Study: Prayer Has No Effect on Heart Surgery Recovery” — and underneath that should be “What Did They Miss?”

In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

They actually tried to do a “serious” study on this? I’ve often wondered how people participate in sleep tests and sex tests and other such ought-to-be-private “enterprises.” I mean, how could you perform normally in any of that sort of stuff when you know you’re being studied, scrutinized, scored, and so forth?!

But studying prayer? Now that isn’t just silly or sick — it’s stupid.

How is anyone going to pray normally and sincerely as part of a test? How is anyone going to genuinely pray to God and communicate with Him knowing it’s all being studied, scrutinized, scored, and so forth?!

And how do they know what the effect of no prayer would have been on any given person? A control group certainly won’t reveal that!

And how did they keep away the prayers of people not participating in the pseudo-study?

Man, attempting to be wise, again makes a fool of himself.

Researchers emphasized that their work can’t address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another’s behalf. The study can only look for an effect from prayers offered as part of the research, they said.

Oh, so they do admit it’s all a crock.

And they admit this isn’t a study about genuine prayer to God. Rather it was a study about the psychological impact of suspecting that someone might be praying for you. It isn’t a study on the effectiveness of prayer at all!

They also said they had no explanation for the higher complication rate in patients who knew they were being prayed for, in comparison to patients who only knew it was possible prayers were being said for them.

Can you help them solve that mystery?

Or perhaps you would rather answer a different question. How many of those prayers remain stuck in monastery ceilings or floating around loose in the air, unattended and unheard…and unanswered?

(So much more to say, but I’ll let it at that.)

Oh, here’s another news report on the story.