An interesting perspective on Pride

Proverbs 26:7 & 9

Like the legs which are useless to the lame
and like a thorn which falls into the hand of a drunkard,
so is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.

Ok, so I took a little liberty with the verses by combining them, but it sure did help me understand it better. It is interesting how those to illustrations build on each other. First, what are legs to a lame person. The legs are just added weight, baggage, something that constantly gets in the lame persons way. The lame have no use for their legs. How about a thorn which falls into the hand of a drunkard? It lodges there, but does not bring about the appropriate response of pain and a corrective action. It is even possible the the drunkard would look at it and laugh about how they have something stuck in their hand and leave it.

What do these have in common, neither the legs or the thorn are bringing about their intended purpose – walking and pain. The same goes with a proverb in the mouth of a fool. He says the words, but there is no action taken from the pain brought about through the conviction of the proverb.

Most of us would concede to some extent we are prideful, but that there is nothing wrong with it. It is something we make excuses for by comparing ourselves to others and saying that we are justified in it. Prov. 26:12 really brings home how dangerous that attitude is about pride.
Prov. 26:12

Do you see a man wise in his own eyes?
There is more hope for a fool than for him.

Wow, worse than a fool. We really should humble ourselves and respond to the conviction (pain) brought about by God’s Word in our life and repent (turn and walk away from it).

My “first” patient and operation

Last week during my DRS class I had a really funny experience.  Less then a year ago I worked as a computer programmer and all-around computer support guru for several different people and friends.  6 months ago, I started medical school and left almost all my computer experience behind in my new relationships.  I didn’t tell anyone but a select few that I had a B.S. in computer science and that working on computers was second nature to me.

Well last week when I was apprenticing under my preceptor (local doctor in the community) all that changed.  We had seen several patients and had some downtime in the afternoon.  My preceptor pulled out his personal laptop and plugged it into his computer network and mentioned under his breath, “I hope it connects because it didn’t work yesterday.”  Moments later, it didn’t work and I offered my experience to try and fix it.

After a few minutes debugging, it turned out that the 5th pin in the ethernet slot was stuck down and wasn’t making contact with the ethernet cable.  In order to fix it, I needed a small tool to slip under it and pull it up.  My preceptor produce a syringe with a 16 gage needle and the next thing I knew I was in an examining room with his laptop on the examining table (better light) and started my first minor operation.

First thing I did was to bend the very tip of the needle at a right angle so I could slip the needle under the depressed pin.  Next, I grabbed an otoscope, turn its light on and looked through it to get a better view of the problematic pin.  A few moments later, the procedure was over and I had brought the laptop back to my preceptor’s office (the recovery room) plugged it in and it worked.

Needless to say, I don’t have an pictures because I was unable to get the permission of the patient (actually I just forgot).