ICU, Prison, and As Far As The Curse Is Found

According to the latest figures from the CDC, approximately one million Americans are injured annually as a result of falling on ice and snow.

I'm Peter Rosenberg, and as a caregiver for my wife for more than 35 years, I understand the importance of helping someone with a mobility impairment get in and out of the home safely, particularly in inclement weather. And that's why this winter I'm using HeatTrak. They're snow and ice melting mats that you just plug in and they provide you a safe walkway to your garage, to your mailbox, to your deck, to your business. Whatever the need, HeatTrak has a mat that will fit that need and make sure that you can get in safely during snow and ice. You don't have to plow, you don't have to shovel, and you don't have to worry about falling because you're walking on something that is safe and secure and dry. This winter, let's stay out of the emergency room.

Let's make sure we're safe. Go to HeatTrak.com. Put in the coupon code CAREGIVER for a special discount. At Christmas time or any time of the year, HeatTrak makes a great gift.

Go to HeatTrak.com. Coupon code CAREGIVER. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver.

This is Peter Rosenberg and this is the program for you as a family caregiver. How are you feeling? How are you doing? You know I love that song. Gracie got in the studio this week and was recording a song that Gary Chapman wrote for her. He wrote the song you just heard, Treasure, and she's recording that and we're working that up.

It's a wonderful song and I look forward to sharing that with you at some point in the near future. It was good for her to get back in there and get back into the swing of things. She's had a rough year. Most of you know I think that regularly listen to the program that she had a terrible fall right before Labor Day and broke her femur. They had to fly her over to Billings, Montana and they had to operate on her. It's been a pretty rough year for her.

Right after that she lost her mother. Her mother passed away so this has been a very hard year for her and I was glad to see her singing. One of the things we have found over the years with the two of us is the music. Hans Christian Anderson said that when words fail, music speaks.

As musicians, Gracie and I have been able to sometimes go to the piano and she'll sing and I'll play and we just didn't even have the words. She'll sing a lot of these old hymns and just go through them and she delivers it with such a wonderful richness to her voice. She did a recording of Breathe On Me Breath of God.

Do you know that hymn? Breathe On Me Breath of God? My mother was in the ICU a couple years ago and she was in pretty bad shape. She couldn't breathe. She had congestive heart failure and she was in bad shape.

She couldn't speak. They had a trach but she had mouthed out that she wanted Gracie to sing this hymn, Breathe On Me Breath of God. Gracie sat there in the ICU with my mother. It was kind of a role reversal because my mother spent so many times with Gracie in the hospital. My mother's name is Mary and Gracie's first name is Mary. So you have two Mary Rosenburgers.

It was really funny. Years ago mom came up to me with Gracie when Gracie's in the hospital but then mom ended up having a fall and she broke her leg and she was in the same hospital that Gracie was in. We had two Mary Rosenburgers in there but I was afraid that the doctor would go in there and see mom and get the chart mixed up with Gracie because they still call Gracie Mary when she's in the hospital and they get them mixed up and say, Mrs. Rosenburg, your legs grew back.

It's a miracle. But anyway, Gracie was singing to her in the ICU and I watched all these nurses lean their head. They just stopped and they all just listened as she sang, Breathe On Me Breath of God.

A friend of mine's husband just passed away this week. I've been friends with them for 30 plus years and I sent the link of Gracie singing that to them. Just acapella because these old hymns mean something. This music means something to us. They anchor us. The theology is just so strong and that's why I do these songs.

I love these things and I'm glad to see Gracie get back in the studio. Speaking of a friend of mine passing away, this is a hard time of year for a lot of folks at Christmas and I'm not insensitive to that. Christmas can be very difficult for caregivers for so many people. We see the empty chair. We sometimes have it in a hospital or gathered around a hospital bed that's in a home.

There's all kinds of different things that are a heartache for Christmas. Some of you have loved ones who would much rather fill their lives with alcohol or drugs than with the love of a family that desperately wants to love them. Some of you are in prison. I get letters from a lot of inmates that listen to this program.

One of them is a guy named Carl. I sent you a note, Carl, if you're listening this morning. I want you to know how much I appreciated your letter.

Carl's from Texas and he's serving time right now and I appreciate that very much that you listen and that you trust me with your loneliness and your sadness. I know that this is a time of year when the sentiment and the nostalgia and the loneliness can overtake us. I appreciate this network that is so widely broadcast. We don't know when we are recording a program like this or doing it live like I do that where it's going to go, who's listening, who is driving right now that just had to turn it on and are struggling with loneliness. And we don't know. But we want to be faithful to put it out there and to keep saying this message that you're not alone.

And aren't you grateful for a network that has the kind of scope that this one does? And all our affiliates, the Truth Network, his radio and all these others that are banded together to communicate the gospel. Far As the Curse is Found. You know that hymn? Isaac Watts wrote it. It's Joy to the World which is one of the greatest hymns of all and Isaac Watts wrote that lyric and he said in there, Far As the Curse is Found.

Far As the Curse is Found. What is he referring to? Well he's referring to back in Genesis when the curse was pronounced upon mankind for the sin that was done. No more let sin and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground.

Remember that? He said you're going to have to toil by the sweat of your brow, the thorns and so forth. He comes to make his blessings flow. Far As the Curse is Found. Far As the Curse is Found. Far As the Curse. So Jesus became the curse.

As far as that is found around the entire globe, he broke that. And I love that hymn. Did you know that's just a C major scale? Of course if you do it in C, but it's just a major scale. Did you ever practice pianos?

Those of you pianists, did you ever practice your scales? Well, that's it. Joy to the World is this. That is the gospel in one major scale, in one phrase.

Joy to the World, the Lord has come. Of course Isaac Watts, one of the great hymn writers of all time, wrote this amazing text. And if you go back and look at all the texts of a lot of these Christmas songs, and isn't it great that cancel culture hasn't figured out yet how powerful the gospel is in these things?

Because otherwise they would be banned in these things. But if Facebook didn't fact check Evidently Joy to the World, or if they did, they're not censoring it and it's saying the gospel in it. It's the same thing with Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Of course Mendelssohn wrote the tune, but it was Charles Wesley that wrote the lyrics. Glory to the newborn king, peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled. Joyful all you nations rise, join the triumph of the skies, with the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem. These are powerful lyrics that we can hang on to in the midst of this. Mild he lays his glory by. We sing these things sometimes and don't realize what we're singing. Mild he lays his glories by.

What a beautiful way. What he's saying is, he humbly condescended to us. And then it says, born that man no more may die. Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth. Mild he lays his glory by. And these are powerful words that mean something in the midst of our angst, our loneliness, our fearfulness, our heartache, our isolation.

To my new friend Carl in a Texas prison, these words mean something. And so that's why these wonderful hymns of the season, and then we'd sing them year round. Don't ever forget that, Joy to the World.

And then, you know, I love these hymns. And so I'm just grateful to be able to share them with you. And as we get ready to start a new year, at the beginning of the year, we'll do more of these things.

We'll have more. And I want you to always feel free to call in and ask for one that you feel is special to you, that means something to you. And I will keep introducing them to you as we move forward, because I think that in the midst of our craziness, this is what is going to mean something to us to anchor us so that we don't lose perspective. And as you go through this season, there are some people that I would ask you to keep in mind as you pray and lift them up.

Certainly all these victims of the tornadoes and these folks that are in prison. You know, Jesus said, sick, naked, hungry, prison, thirsty. These are the things He's looking for from us.

And are we doing that? So I introduce one inmate to you today. His name is Carl. He's in a prison. He's in Texas. Would you lift him up and ask that the Lord continue to meet him in a powerful way, even behind bars this Christmas season.

There's another one in North Carolina, I believe. And his name is John. And I would ask that you also remember him as well. Some of you know the remarkable story of Peter's wife, Gracie. And recently, Peter talked to Gracie about all the wonderful things that have emerged from her difficult journey. Take a listen. Gracie, when you envision doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?

Not in a million years. When you go to the facility run by CoreCivic and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country, that you put out the plea for, and they're disassembling. You see all these legs, like what you have, your own prosthetic legs. And arms.

And arms. When you see all this, what does that do to you? Makes me cry.

Because I see the smiles on their faces. And I know, I know what it is to be locked someplace where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out. Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long. These men are so glad that they get to be doing, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled?

No. I had no idea. You know, I thought of peg leg. I thought of wooden legs. I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that.

I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for these supplies to get over there, what does that do to you, just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there. And I wish that I could be able to go and say, this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.

Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave, I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them. And I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith-based programs that CoreCivic offers? I think they're just absolutely awesome. And I think every prison out there should have faith-based programs like this because the return rate of the men that are involved in this particular faith-based program and the other ones like it, but I know about this one, is just an amazingly low rate compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much.

That doesn't have anything to do with me. It just has something to do with God using somebody broken to help other broken people. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limb, whether from a loved one who passed away or, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own. How do they do that? Where do they find them? Oh, please go to StandingWithHope.com slash recycle. StandingWithHope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.