Sickening

I realized recently that I can be very motivated by pain, but absent the pain, my discipline can often go by the wayside.

Recently I suffered through a head and chest cold, not as severe as some people I know were going through, but sick nonetheless. The day my symptoms started I was driving back from a glorious visit to the promised land of Sherman Oaks and Orange County. In Sherman Oaks live my wife's son and his beautiful two-year-old daughter "Faith" who we stayed with while we were there, and in "The OC" another daughter and the church we were from before we came to Sacramento.

Cute little Faith was recovering from a cold, but apparently not recovered enough not to pass it on to me. Germs are funny creatures silently working at our wellbeing, and stealthily entering in to invade our peace, comfort and safety. As I was driving back to Sacramento from a beautiful trip, the symptoms began to manifest. You know the feeling, the little scratch in the back of your throat and that tightening feeling behind your eyes, and perhaps just a little irritability. Well, being the wimp that I am for colds, I made a stop at Rite-Aid for the Zicam, a supposed cold preventer. It's amazing what we will pay for a chance to be rid of discomfort.

I bought the generic Zicam and some herbal throat drops, not worrying about spraying some chemical all over the inside of my mouth if it will keep the cold and flu wolf at bay. But, I better get the all-natural throat drops lest I suck on some kind of chemical and grow a green horn out the top of my head when I'm 60. Funny and even sicker is the inconvenience we will go through so we can feel better. We will often compromise our principles and give away the farm if we would just feel better. This same thinking is what keeps drug addicts addicted and alcoholics drinking, I know, I was both.

After a few days of "religiously" applying the Zicam to the insides of my mouth every four hours, and sucking down a bag of "herbal" throat drops, and again, religiously taking my Mucinex every four hours, I began to get better. Amazingly, as I was getting better, my "religious" Zicaming, throat dropping and Mucinex taking severely dropped off. The thought came to me when I realized this morning that I had not dosed myself in at least the last 18 hours. Who needs medicine when you're getting well?

You are either laughing at me, and or questioning my severe lack of character and intestinal fortitude at this point, or you are nodding your head in agreement. It wouldn't be so funny if it wasn't so true. It goes way past colds, flus and broken legs. It goes also for problems on our jobs, in our marriages and with our finances, proving the truth that we are broken people inside, sinful and depraved, beyond helping ourselves out of the mess we are in.

If we have trouble on our job, get written up say, we straighten up, hurry up or whatever else was the right thing to do in the first place. If we have trouble with our marriage and our wife is becoming increasingly hostile, we start bringing flowers, asking her to dinner and shaving more often. If we suddenly realize we are in a mountain of debt with no way out, we start cutting up credit cards and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and beans. And the minute the boss tells us what a good job we are doing, the wife starts loving us again and we start climbing out of debt, "you know what" happens.

Same is true for spiritual things, and if we think about it, are not all things spiritual, including jobs, marriages and finances? We get in trouble whether internal or external and back to church we go, into our bibles we start looking and our prayer lives get a big shot in the arm.

Perhaps this is exactly why the God who loves us more than we can imagine, more than even life and comfort itself, allows these things to plague our life.

Keep Jesus close through worship, prayer and study of the word, and stay in touch with your friends in the Lord that can help hold you up. If we let these things down we are sure to get a "cold or flu" that will drive us to the medicine.