Has your body ever betrayed you? After a great time in Dallas TX with my daughter and her family from Monday through Friday last week, Donna and I returned to Southern California! As we came back, Kara and her family were dropping to a flu-like illness one by one. By the time we landed at Ontario, they all had gotten sick. We were looking over our shoulders wondering. Waiting.
We didn’t have to wait long. By Friday night Donna was violently ill. I held out until Saturday morning. Then it got me.
Bleah. Chills. Sweats. Fever. “Stomach issues” from two directions (figure it out). Headaches. Very high blood pressure (yeah, I can actually feel it).
I don’t get sick (that way anyway) often, and I felt betrayed by my body—as though I had betrayed myself. This is me–my body–and it isn’t supposed to act like this! As I write this, I haven’t been sick for four days, but I am still weak, trying to get back to where I was physically.
After being betrayed by my own body.
While I didn’t grow up in it, all my adult life I have been a part of the Church. As a man who came to the Lord out of personal desperation I have never understood people who take the church lightly. Those who are not committed, serving, reaching out to bring others into this great body of the Lord, giving, worshipping with anyone—anytime—any way we can. How can “Christians NOT be caught up in this life God has given us?
I still don’t get it. Some say it is because many of the people in the church are not really part of the church (sheep and goats). Some say it is the immaturity that the American church seems addicted to. Some simply chalk it up to human nature—we have all sinned!
All of these things are true. But while I understand these reasons mentally, personally, I still just don’t get it.
But I do understand more of what happens when people do this.
It is the same as the body betraying itself. The body (the Church) gets sick.
It gets weak.
It can’t get the things done it needs to do. It can’t enjoy what God has given it. When people seem to be part of the church, but take it lightly in this way, the body of Christ is sick.
Even after we repent and begin to grow it takes a while for us to be strong, but we can recover.
If we want to.
Our body can function again. We can feel good again.
Because God has made us to be healthy.
I want that health. Physically. Spiritually. I think most of us do.
The good news is we have the choice to be healthy or not (the “bug” didn’t ask me!). Choose health. Choose to know the Lord, and to be faithful.