David Gray, one of Baylyblog's senior correspondents, is a respiratory therapist... (Actually, David just told me I'm wrong. What he does, I don't know--but on to the post anyhow...)
When I was a young long-hair, I was regularly in the home of a family friend, John Raffensperger, who at the time was chief surgeon of Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.
If you've read Dad's books, you know John as the sceptic in I Love to Tell the Story--Dad's account of twenty-five years co-teaching (with Ken Hansen) the multi-generational Covenant Class at College Church in Wheaton; and also "Price Berkowitz," the hero of Dad's apocalyptic novel, Winterflight. John was (and I assume still is) an unbeliever, yet the affection he and Dad had for each other went deep. Thus John was the mold for Winterflight's Berkowitz, the only physician willing to jeopardize his medical practice by helping the little hemophiliac boy.
When Winterflight came out Dad sent a copy to John. Sadly, since leaving College Church, John had gone down an dark hole. After reading the book Dad sent him, he was so furious over the novel's plot and Berkowitz's role in it that he sent Dad a splenetic diatribe of a letter and set about writing his own novel attacking Winterflight.
All this as preface to the fact that John did everything he could to discourage me from entering pastoral ministry. When I'd visit the Raffenspergers, John always asked me the same question: "Tim, what are you going to do with your life?"
I'd answer...
This is Apple. After spending $1,000,000,000 on their new headquarters, we find out the campus has no place for children. No nurseries. No childcare. Keep the kids outta here. Keep the kids in the freezer. Keep the women unpregnant. Keep marriage beds sterile.