I sit here in San Antonio, TX. It’s a great city…though all I’ve actually seen is the Riverwalk area. I’ve met some great people since I’ve been here. I am trying to “go with the flow” and see where life takes me, but I think. A lot. I can’t not analyze this and that. I want to understand the why and the what.
You see, I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe that over the past few days I have met people that I was supposed to meet. I may not know why I’ve met some of these people, but I believe that our paths will cross again. Maybe not in the next week or month, but one day. And one day, I’ll understand. Even if it is not on this side of eternity.
I am a logical person. I think things through (for the most part.) Yet, I do have an irrational side. I am a woman after all. My hormones give me the right to have some ebb and flow in my emotional state. I believe imagio dei, that I am made in the image of God. If you read the Bible, God has emotions. He sings over us with rejoicing. He gets angry. Jesus wept.
Faith was not easy for me to come by. I didn’t wake up one day and say, “Yup, today I believe in God.” It took a lot of convincing. I still don’t have all of the answers. I never will. I would love to know why bad things happen to good people. I would love to know why the most beautiful little children are suffering through poverty, HIV/AIDS, cancer. Why are there child molesters in the world? Why can’t the middle east have peace? But one day, I came to the realization that God is real. I can’t tell you what He looks like. He’s an infinite being that my head will never full comprehend. But I know that He is.
Last night I compared faith and religion to a dental implant. (Yeah…all of my worlds are seamlessly connected.) We know that if you put a titanium screw into bone, it will integrate into the bone. That is why hips and knees and dental implants are all made of titanium. What we do not know is why titanium integrates into the bone. We just know that it does. There are theories, but to my knowledge, no one theory answers the question. That is how I rationalize my faith in God. I don’t know why He makes the decisions that He does. But I know that He does. I can’t point Him out in a crowd, but I can immediately tell people who have genuine faith. It’s just something that you know in your knower.
I have a whole lot to process. Today I move to a quieter hotel to process my thoughts.
Deneen White 
There must be a lot of people in unreached countries with bad teeth. What if missionary teams of Christian dentists and dental hygenists went to places where people don’t have dental implants and clean teeth, and fixed their teeth and shared the gospel with them at the same time? Is anyone doing that?
I know that there are definitely dental groups that go help people with their teeth and present the gospel. That is actually part of the reason that I took this job…people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. I would love to make some connections with dentists who would be interested in going to a third world country to practice dentistry for those who need it. But that will take a bit of time. How loudly would it speak to take care of someone’s dental health (the tangible love of Christ) and then tell them about Christ?