Does Your Heart Sing?

Does Your Heart Sing?

by Dr. Bill Reed

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I felt that when I left the University of Michigan, which I thought was a wonderful experience, I’d been there for a number of years and got my specialty degree as a general surgeon, I thought that now I can start doing those things that I’m supposed to do, that God wants me to do. But there was something missing, I felt. And it really began one day when I was in my training at Ann Arbor in the Department of Pathology. Every surgeon has to spend one year of his time of training in either research or in pathology or some scientific field of that sort. And I had spent two periods of six months each in the Department of Pathology.

The pathologist was Dr. Carl Weller, a very famous pathologist. And under his department, there was a very wonderful pathologist by the name of Jim French. Ruth Wannstrom. Ruth Wannstrom had been my pathology teacher when I was in medical school. We used to call her teacher. And she was just a plain wonderful woman, I thought. And I think all the other students thought so too. But at that particular time, when I was in the Department of Pathology, and seeing her virtually every day, I decided that… Well, we decided that we were going to become Episcopalians. The church was nearby. They had a good Sunday school. A lot of good reports. A lot of people that we knew went there. And so we decided that we would become Episcopalians. So we went to the lectures and the various education things that were done to allow us to go through the confirmation process. It was amazing to me to find that this pathologist by the name of Ruth Wannstrom was also coming into the Episcopal Church. So my family and I were Presbyterians coming into the Episcopal Church. And so I kind of became interested in her and I asked her about why she was becoming an Episcopalian and all that. But anyhow, I was doing a dissection one day of an infant heart.

This little infant had died of congenital heart disease. And I was dissecting this specimen. You become what’s called a prosector in pathology in which you’re cutting various sections and so on and sending them in so that slides can be made and so forth. And I was very engrossed in what I was doing. And I sensed that somebody was beside me and I looked there and it was Dr. Wannstrom.

And she said to me, “Bill, I noticed that you’re in the confirmation class that’s over at church. And I wanted to ask you a question.” And I said, “Well, sure.” She said to me, “Do you believe that Jesus can heal anybody today?”

And I hadn’t thought of anything like that and I don’t know how long. But I’d been born and raised in a Christian family with a mother and a father who believed in Christian healing. And not that it was any part of our church or anything like that, but they just prayed about everything, especially if anybody got sick. In those days we had no antibiotics or anything. The person got sick, we usually got a dose of castor oil or Carter’s Little Liver Pills or something like that, you know. But the remedies were not quite like they are today. But we did have lots of prayer. But I said, “Well, Dr. Wannstrom, I believe that nobody gets healed of anything unless Jesus does it.” Now, I don’t know where that came from. Because I hadn’t gone to any lectures on divine healing or anything like that at all. But it just occurred to me that all that we doctors were those that kind of set the stage. If we set the stage right, God moved in through Jesus Christ and healing occurred. How that happens is still a mystery, I think, in lots of ways. Even with antibiotics and chemotherapy and all that sort of thing. We still don’t know just exactly what that healing process really is.

And it’s got to be a Godly mechanism. But as a young doctor in the pathology department, I told her that I thought that nobody got well unless God, through Jesus Christ, did it. And she said, “Well, you know,” she said, “if you believe that, why don’t we study it?” Well, we studied everything, you know, in pathology. She was an expert in studying the pathology of the eye, for example. Various parts of the eye, the retina, and all the other parts of the eye, for example.

And so she was that kind of a person. And I said, “Well, that would be wonderful. I think we should study about God’s healing power.” And so she said, “Well, why don’t we start having a class at 5 o’clock on Monday afternoons? Would you be willing to come?” I said, “Yes, I would love to.” Well, we started having a class on divine healing in the pathology department at University Hospital in Ann Arbor.

And as I reflected on it at that time, I thought, isn’t that strange that at this place where we never had any… All the way through medical school there, I never went to a prayer meeting. I never heard about a prayer meeting. Never heard any dissertation on God or on Jesus or on healing or anything like that. That was just absolutely just simply left out. And during my residency, it was the same thing. I heard the name of Jesus lots of times, but usually it was used as an expletive during the middle of an operation or something like that, when something might be going wrong.

But we started having this little class. And of all things, she introduced to us a magazine called Sharing Magazine. And Sharing Magazine was a big 8×11 sheet that came from San Diego from Ethel Tullock Banks, who was the widow of John Gaynor Banks, who was the founder of the Order of St. Luke. Glenn Clark and John Gaynor Banks at the same time founded two organizations. One, Camps Farthest Out, and John and Ethel Banks formed what originally was the Fellowship of St. Luke, and then it became the Order of St. Luke. Well, it was an interesting thing to read Sharing Magazine because here were articles that were written by doctors, but largely by ministers, largely by Episcopal priests, and by lay people telling about the kinds of healing that were occurring in their lives or in their churches or in their fellowship groups or something like that. And it was almost as if all of a sudden I woke up. It was as if I was mixed up in science and all kinds of technical things and so forth, but there had been something left out of my life. The Jesus dimension had been left out of my life. It wasn’t that people had… I don’t think that they decided to do just that. But it just wasn’t convenient to bring the Lord into the medical school or to the university or whatever.

And so, there I was, reading Sharing Magazine and praying. We began praying for our patients. We were still on call even though we were on pathology. We still have a call. I remember one time going up to the pediatric department and there was a little tyke in there that had had gastrointestinal surgery that morning for a diaphragmatic hernia. A hernia that was on the left side of the abdomen, an opening in the diaphragm. So the intestines were going up into the left thoracic cavity. And they had repaired that defect and put tubes in the chest because the poor little child’s lung was not expanding on the left side. And as I went in there, the nurse came up and told me what had happened, what was going on with the child. And he was in a little oxygen tent at that point. And I remember just simply putting my hand in, doing examination, listening to the chest and all that stuff. But then the time came when I just simply put my hand on that little baby’s head, because we’ve been studying this in our little prayer group downstairs. And I just silently asked Jesus if He would touch the life of that child.

I… the nurse, of course, wasn’t in the evidence at that particular time she had. I probably would have been a little more cautious because it really wasn’t something that was done. You know, and I thought, what’s going to happen if it gets reported that Dr. Reed is now not only seeing patients, but praying with them. But anyhow, I was just a little bit cautious. But a little later on in the evening, I went back to see how the child was doing.

And surprisingly enough, the child was breathing better, was pink and looking good. The respirations were okay, the heart sounded fine. And to make a long story short, she just simply got well and left the hospital okay. But the thing that was so interesting about that was that when I went in there and I checked the child over again, I was looking at her and a fat little nurse came kind of waddling up to me, coming walked up to me. And she said, “Dr. Reed,” she said, “when you came in a little earlier and you put the oxygen tent back and you put your hand on the baby’s head and prayed for him,” she said, “I just wanted you to know that I was over in the corner. You didn’t know I was there. I was sitting in the chair and I joined in praying with you for that child.” And that was the first example of really what began to occur in what became a lifetime of not only taking care of my patients in the usual way, in the surgical way or the medical way or whatever, but also in the spiritual way. It just simply meant bringing Jesus in. It wasn’t that He wasn’t there. He was there. He was taking care of the needs of that child.

But the scripture says, ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open unto you. In the little book of James, I think it’s in the third chapter, it says, you have not because you ask not. Or when you do ask, you ask for the wrong motivation. And so I began thinking that I should ask, you know, and I should ask Jesus to help. And my professor, who had gotten me involved in all this in this strange and wonderful way, we went to one of the meetings on Monday afternoon.

And I noticed that she was limping. And what had happened was, this is why I live in Florida, not Michigan. She had slipped on the ice and had really damaged her hip. And unbeknownst to me, she had been taken up to the operating room and they had done what’s called a Smith-Petersen nailing. They didn’t do hip prosthesis in those days. But then just simply put a nail in her hip so that those fragments of the bone could be put together and they could be held together so that she could go ahead and walk. Well, of course, she was on two arm crutches now and having a lot of pain. And when she came in, I was so disturbed. And so we just went ahead and started praying for her.

And we thought that she would be a case in point. And, you know, as we prayed for her, she graduated from two arm crutches to one arm crutch, to a cane, to the point where she didn’t even use a cane. She was going to retire early. She didn’t. She continued to finish her entire tenure. And I began to become an ardent believer in the fact that Jesus Christ can do anything. Like we sang earlier in the week, my God can do anything. He can do anything. He’s infinitely beyond anything that we can ask for or we can even dream about. That’s in Ephesians 3.20. God is able.

And I was so happy to have the privilege of coming over here to share some of these ideas with you all. Because, you know, when you have gone through what I’ve gone through, and not just my lifetime, this will be my 60th year in the practice of medicine, not that I’m as active as I once was, but I still have my license. I still see patients. I primarily specialize in patients that have been given up. I don’t charge anything for the patients that I see anymore.

I… we have healing services at our little chapel there in Tampa. Because I closed the surgical office. I took a lot of my instruments, my tables, my dermatomes, all that kind of stuff. I sent it all to Honduras down there to a mission group. Because it just bothered me to see all my beautiful stuff there. I loved my instruments. You know, like a tennis player loves his tennis racket, and his golf man loves his… a golf person loves his golf clubs. So I loved my surgical instruments. I loved my obstetrical forceps. To this day, even though I never delivered any babies after I became a surgeon, except through an occasional cesarean section, I still kept my solid-blade Simpson forceps. I don’t suppose, Christopher, you know anything about solid-blade Simpsons. But if you… I don’t want to see them. I do. Oh, you don’t. You do. Yeah. And I delivered lots of babies using those forceps.

And… I loved the instrumentation. Not only in music, but also in surgery. And in my library, I have drawers that have a lot of my surgical instruments today, and I haven’t been able to part with them yet. I don’t know why I’m going into all of this, but it’s just to give you kind of an idea of where this fellow that came over from Tampa area, where he stands after having brought Jesus into his life and practice a lot of years ago when he first became a surgeon. And how I’ve done this throughout my surgical life. And I’ve done this before, as I’ve said before, when I went up to Bay City, Michigan to practice initially, I felt that there was something missing.

Of course, I was getting… now getting Sharing Magazine. I was getting it every month. I’d read it from cover to cover. And then I noticed that they were going to have a convention of the Order of St. Luke in 1958 in Philadelphia. And so I made arrangements to go there. I thought, you really… I’m not going to get involved in anything fanatical in the Episcopal Church. There’s about as dry a bunch as ever were formed. And so I went there feeling that I was very secure going to this particular meeting. And there were some people at that meeting that I have never forgotten. I mean, they… Rufus Womble being one person who’s an Episcopal priest today in Richmond, Virginia. And he’s sort of an adjunct priest at All Saints Episcopal Church because he’s 94 years old. But he’s one of the funniest men on earth and he believes in divine healing. And he’s an absolutely fabulous person in bringing down the power of God and exalting the place of the Lord Jesus Christ in a meeting. When we had a meeting at Charlottesville a year ago in May, the meeting was established by Dr. Cantrell, who was the provost of the university, had been the head of ENT. And he was about to retire and he said, before I retire from the University of Virginia, we’re going to have a conference on spirituality and medicine.

And so last May, toward the end of the month, he invited a lot of people and we sent invitations out all over. And we had a big throng of doctors and nurses that came from everywhere. And of all things, I was the guest of honor and the keynote speaker. And they had such patients or such doctors as Pellegrino from Washington, D.C. and people like that. Very famous people. I wondered what in the world I was doing there. But it was so wonderful to have the privilege of sort of chairing a meeting along with Dr. Cantrell, in which the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of His resurrection was being exalted in a major medical school here in the United States. And this kind of thing is being done elsewhere. But at our meeting, we were not trying to institute the idea that what we were doing was on the psychic realm or the mental realm or suggestion or positive thinking or something like that. But we were just simply saying that Jesus Christ, by the power of His resurrection, is able to do anything. And that we need to ask and we will receive. And that Jesus will hear our prayer. And here I was hearing other doctors. One from Duke University. One from Washington University in Washington, D.C.

An internist from Washington, D.C. And other doctors from all over the United States and Canada were there. Some just attending and some speaking. Well, I don’t know. It seems to me that lay people, and particularly people like those in the Order of St. Luke and CFO, should be very, very thankful to think that they’re not just a little group here and there or a medium-sized group, perhaps, here and there across the United States and Canada, getting together and praying for one another. But actually, there is something happening within the profession of medicine. And in our universities and in our medical schools. And also the same way in Canada. Of course, as you probably know, I am an absolute optimist about things. I believe things are going in the right direction. We don’t hear much about it because of the media these days. Billy Graham once said there’s been a great move of God in the United States, but nobody knows anything about it because the media does not report what’s happening in the spiritual realm. I’ve been glad that since he’s been up there in New York City, at least, they’re mentioning him. Although they’re saying that this may be his last crusade. I’m hoping that God’s going to raise him up and keep him going strong.

I think that’s a possibility. Another thing that I wanted to say is that there at the University of Michigan, those doctors and nurses that began to orient their lives toward Jesus, pretty soon they began to belong to one another. And I’ve noticed that in the, in Camps Farthest Out since I’ve been a member since 1959 when I went to Ardmore with Tommy Tyson and George Parkhurst. They were the other two leaders. I was the third leader. But we began, not only the leaders, but the people who attended the conference, they began to belong to one another. And I’ve noticed that here, you know. I’ve noticed a tremendous amount of love that’s being shared between the people who come to this particular meeting. And this being my first meeting, I kind of analyze it. I watch you all. I’m tremendously impressed by you. And I think your council ring is one of the best, one of the largest, one of the nicest council rings that I ever saw. I’ve been to some camps where they have just small council rings. This is a good one. And a lot of things are being done here. And keep it up. It’s going to happen. And in these days here in our nation, with these, well, almost seems like there’s an attack against mentioning Jesus in the school system.

Or little kids that become valedictorians of the high school class. They can’t mention Jesus or prayer or anything concerning Christianity in their speeches. Or you, if that is done, you’ve got the ACLU or perhaps other groups that are combating what these young people are doing. Even though the child might be saying, the reason that I’ve done well is not just because of my mental ability, but because I’ve sought God and Jesus throughout all my days in school.

Somebody wrote something like this that said, more and more people are alone these days. This was sung tonight, I think, by someone. I think it was this darling girl that played the piano. And she said something about that we’re often alone. And she was praying in this beautiful song that Jesus would come and take care of that particular problem.

And I want to tell you that when you lose your wife, it makes you feel terribly alone. And that’s been my status for over a month now. But I just want to say, and this is my last talk here this time, I want to thank you for being so wonderful to me, you know, and for caring for me and for helping me. And I haven’t felt alone here at all. But at home, even though my neighborhood, I’ve got the nicest neighborhood you ever saw, the people are bringing me food and everything. You think I was a strange individual, unable to cook. Of course, that’s probably true.

My wife spoiled me absolutely rotten. And so she even told me in her last days, she told me how to make my own oatmeal and things like that. You would think that somebody with his boards and surgery would be a little bit more adept at a few things like that. I had specialized in another area, of course, all these years. But with a little bit more prayer coming from you, I’ll probably do alright. In this whole thing, I’ve lost about 40 pounds. And it isn’t that I’m not eating, but it just seems that it’s my metabolism. But this says more and more people are alone. And that’s me and others who are here that I’ve talked to. It’s not essential then to encourage the creation and growth. Is it not essential then to encourage the creation and growth of places of belonging?

Isn’t this really what the CFO is? We are making a place where we can belong to one another. That’s what a church is. But there’s something of a deeper spiritual dimension that goes on between us in a CFO camp than any other institution that I’ve run across. Yeah, it was that way with the Full Gospel Businessmen. And they even allowed an occasional woman in that group.

But it’s wonderful to come to this kind of a meeting. And particularly with children. They have liked me… One little black boy from New York City, he sort of has adopted me and I’ve adopted him. And I tell him… I say, “Son, go give your mom a nice kiss and a hug. And tell her it came from Dr. Reed.” And so… So he goes tearing… He goes tearing over there, you know. And we have developed a very nice affection toward one another. But… If these intermediaries between people and society, these schools of the heart, do not exist, people will find it more and more difficult to achieve maturity. Well, it’s not just maturity, but… The fact that we have this kind of an organization or this organism of loving and caring for one another and praying for one another, it does something. It does something for the group. And it does something for the individual. And so… For that reason, I do love the CFO. Now… It’s almost time for me to quit.

You don’t tap the watch. I watch Chris, you know, because he uses this maneuver, you know. And my wife was a great one for going like this, you know. But… I wanted to share just something I wrote a couple of years back about all this.

Who was it that was talking about Asheville, North Carolina? Somebody was… Oh, it was… It was Lee. Oh, I’ve got to get even with you, by the way. But anyhow… A friend of mine went to Asheville, North Carolina, an Episcopal priest by the name of Eric Kast. He was the priest at a place called Standish, Michigan. My middle name is Standish. And I always had a particular affection toward Eric. And when I had gone to Philadelphia in 1959, when I went back up there, not only did I get a chance to speak to the convention, but of all things, I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit in a very fluent language. And the ability to interpret and all of that. And there was a new dimension in my life. And I had invited Eric Kast from Standish, Michigan, to come the next year. And he came, a wonderful guy. And I was walking down the corridor of the Ben Franklin Hotel one day. And I saw him coming toward me, you know. And he had this big smile on his face. And I said, “Eric,” I said, “how are you?” He said, “Oh, fine.” He said, “Bill, does your heart sing?” And I listened down there. I got to my heart. I didn’t hear anything.

You know, I said, “Well, no, Eric, I don’t think so.” He said, “Well, ever since they prayed for me last night,” he said, “my heart’s been singing.” He said, “Listen to this.” And right in the middle of a hymn, you know, not starting at the beginning, he’s out there in the corridor of the Ben Franklin Hotel singing, you know. It was very uncharacteristic of him. I never knew another Episcopal priest that, well, recently there have been a few rather interesting experiences with Episcopal ministers praying for me out going into the hospital, for example. But anyhow, I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if your heart were singing? And I thought about that over the years, and it began to happen to me. You know, it’s not those birds in my heart I was talking to you about. But, or maybe it’s the heart strings. You suppose the Lord could come down in the power of His resurrection and start plunking away on your chordae tendineae, which we call heart strings? I think so. So for my wife I wrote something I called A Singing Heart. How can one be sad if he has a singing heart? How can he be conquered with life singing from the start? My hundred trillion cells are singing with my heart’s sweet melody.

My red cells and my white cells echo a cardiac rhapsody. So there really can’t be sickness when there’s singing deep within. There really can’t be depression or falling into sin. Life is joyous and melodious when one’s heart begins to sing. One can’t be defeated no matter what the circumstances bring. So I reckon that this is what I’m led to say. A singing heart is wonderful when it’s pumping blood type J.

In 1995 I wrote this. That was in 1998. This is called The Surgeon’s Prayer. Please give my heart total renewing through receiving in its stead the heart of Jesus Christ. There was something that was said with reference to that in the singing of the kids tonight. We were to have the heart of Jesus. Then let me receive a total exchange transfusion of the healing blood type J. His heart, His hematocrit, His life within my hemoglobin. Never tiring, always loving, always making whole myself and those I touch. May my MRI be His massive resurrection infusion. You’ve often wondered what an MRI is. It’s a massive resurrection infusion. The scalpel of Thy word cutting free the adhesions between the soul and spirit and the joints and marrow. Thus may I be liberated, totally set free, like Martin Luther King, free at last, free at last, and whole in Thee. Amen. Well, these are the kinds of things that occur to me as a result of this life that I have. When you’ve been maybe working for four or five hours, variable, operating on somebody. Maybe a thyroidectomy. It might be a radical mastectomy. It might be a gynecological procedure, which I did also.

And it’s kind of nerve wracking. It’s not something that a person does in order to make himself feel good. It’s something that he’s doing because that’s his occupation. And he’s trying to save somebody’s life. Or he’s trying to make them so that they can live a little longer. You can either palliate or you can cure or whatever. But when I would get through, sometimes I’d be just tired out and I’d go back to the doctor’s lounge.

And poems would come to my mind. And I wrote a lot of poems that way. Well, I don’t know how many doctors write poems, but there’s a journal. I was going to show it to you tonight. It’s called the American Physicians Poetry Association Journal. This is the issue from early 1998. And I’ve got a poem in here called Hope. And another one called Let Me. Let me hope with a heart of love. Let me trust in God above. Let me know that He is there with His children everywhere. Imagine this being in an American medical journal. You know. And the editor of this magazine was up in Hartford, Connecticut. And she was a pediatrician. Something wonderful about women. Especially pediatricians. I’ve thought women pediatricians. Or pediatricians in general are the most wonderful people. Let me know that He is healing every heart and stressful feeling. Let me sense His presence near, blotting out all my dread and fear. Let me know that He is taking care of my children, keeping them from Satan’s snare. Let me know that God is kind, guiding us all when we are blind. Let me know He holds my life, strengthens me in times of strife. Gives me hope and in a sureness. Keeps me perfect through His pureness. These are the kind of things…

You know, if you just are quiet for a minute and take a pencil or a pen in hand and a piece of paper, it’s amazing what God will give you. The other thing I wanted to do tonight… I’m not going to bother you with any more of my poems. Although I brought several more and I know you’re just dying to hear them. But…

I brought my little book. This is called Song and Service Book for Ship and Field. And it was published by the United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1942. And this was given to an awful lot of our soldiers and sailors. And I just wanted you…

To indicate what kinds of hymns are in here. They’re not strange hymns that you’ve never heard, but… Here’s this one, that’s 97. What a friend we have in Jesus. All our sins and griefs to bear. What a privilege to carry.

Everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit. Oh, what needless pain we bear. All because we do not carry. Everything to God in prayer. This little one, the third verse, and we’ll just quit. Are we weak and heavy laden? Cumbered with a load of care.

Take it to the Lord in prayer. Take it to the Lord in prayer. In His arms He’ll take and shield Thee. Thou wilt find a solace there. And I have found that sometimes when I don’t think I know the words I…

I’ve often thought that my language was kind of funny that God had given me until I remembered that my roommate, when I was a freshman in medical school, he was from Detroit. He’s still living as John Magelski. I’ll see him shortly. And John would come in the room and he’d say, “Mabuk slay je, bo pain slay je.” And that’s Polish. You know what that means? Move over your hearing, a gentleman is about to pass. And when I was in Poland, in Zakopane, I was with a Catholic group. We took our meals in a convent. And Francis MacNutt stayed in the monastery. I lived in a farmhouse. But it was wonderful to be with those Polish Catholics. And they were all under communism in those days. My roommate was a medical student from Warsaw. And he didn’t think that I knew anything about Polish. And I saw him over there, you know, by the window reading something. And I walk in the room and I say, “Mabuk slay je, bo pain slay je.” And he about fell off his chair. Because I said, move over your hearing, a gentleman is about to pass.

All the different languages. I thank you for inviting me to come here. I thank you that you invited me to come with Dr. Lee over there because he’s been a particular friend. I liked him particularly well this morning when he took the part of Kathryn Kuhlman. He said that she… she… this was how he did it, you know. He said she’d come… he was just like an angel walking through with a beautiful gown behind her, you know. And he uses those kinds of strange maneuvers. He was talking about his daughter that got caught in the stairwell, you know. And she couldn’t get through, she couldn’t get in, she couldn’t get out. And he said, and she was lying over there like this. You know, with… it was wonderful watching… it was like…

It was like watching Peter Sellers. Because… because like Peter Sellers, what does he do? He gets in the wrong bathroom. And he got in the ladies room out of St. Leo’s. And he was brushing his teeth and shaving over there and all of a sudden he looks back in the shower and here’s a fräulein back there… taking the shower. And I could see him just leaving, you know, in a puff of smoke. I thought he was a riot this morning. I mean… he does that sort of thing. He gets you sort of… responding to his marvelous sense of humor and then all of a sudden, bam, he hits you with that great message. Fantastic. And besides that, he goes to the Bahamas. And I’ve given them the name of a couple of my friends down there. Hopefully he’ll contact them. But maybe one of these days I might even go down there to the Bahamas with him. You know, because I’d give anything to hear some more of his story, especially his tales about Kathryn Kuhlman. I thank you, Lord, that I’m a Floridian. Floridian?

Floridian that owned property up in Georgia. So I’m also a Georgian by adoption. Floridian. And I’m a North and South Carolinian by virtue of the fact that I’ve gotten invited up there so many times. And I’ve always said that I never would refuse an invitation to either North or South Carolina. And this is the kind of thing that a person can do if he determines along his life line that he’s going to serve Jesus. And to me, it’s been the most thrilling amazing thing in the world to serve Christ in the kind of way that I’ve been proven to do. And now that I’m alone, I’m not alone because Jesus is with me, but I mean in the ordinary physical sense of that I’m alone. I’ve been trying to determine, in particular this week of drawing aside with you all over here, trying to figure out just exactly what I’m going to do. And I think I’m just going to kind of settle back and see what Jesus does and where the calls come from, where the opportunities are. As I say, I’m going to my 60th medical class reunion in early October. I’m going to be with my U.S. Navy Air Squadron, Blimp Squadron, the doctor of the blimp squadron out in California. For a while the only doctor that they had out there.

And besides that, there are all these things that are occurring right now in our world. And I think that those people that have had a positive relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, that God is going to use us in a way far beyond anything that we have any idea of. And all He needs from us is just our willingness to totally and absolutely and completely serve Him. And that’s what I want to do. I don’t know whether I’ve got a week or a month or a year or whatever, or 10 years. My Bible says that the Lord Himself has said your years will be 120. And maybe I’ll live that long. Who knows? At any rate, it’s like Kerry said to the Democratic Party, you know. But I say to Jesus, I’m available. I’m reporting for duty. And I want to be used by Him.