Friday, March 20, 2009

Achhhhooo



Kabooom.

Ten thousand droplets of snotty mist expelled at 40 miles per hour. Each droplet carrying a payload of millions of invisible rhinos. Rhino-viruses, actually, expelled from my body in a cataclysmic respiratory spasm - aka- a sneeze. That pretty well sums up my week since Tuesday night when this nasty thing hit. Look at the picture here. It's a rhino-virus, one of 200 likely viral culprits for the common cold. I never thought about it much, but I wonder if some guy with a microscope looked at this and saw the little horns poking out, and said, "Hmm. This little virus Looks like it has rhinoceros horns. Let's call it a rhino-virus." I bet that's really it. What if it had looked like dog poop? Something to think about . . .

As I'm lying in bed last night, dramatically tossing and turning back and forth, hacking up a lung and groaning for effect, Ana speaks words of comfort to me. Ana, my dear, dear wife, tells me, "It's really hard to feel very sorry for you when you already feel so sorry for yourself." Is there no pity left in the world today, I ask?

So the sermon this week is from a terrific passage - Ephesians 2 (you can click on the link at right here and go right to the passage). What occured to me this week is that sin and sickness have some things in common. These little rhino-virus jerks want to take me out of commission; sin wants the same. When they succeed for a time, I become ineffective in my life and I sort of disappear from the scene for awhile. And so it is with sin. As we are lulled away from our relationship with God into a self-focused, diseased mindset, we are taken out of "the game" that God has for us. We find that we are ineffective in our relationships, in our efforts, and the same sort of depression that happens when we're sick can take place.
I don't know how this will work in the message, but the passage is full of good news mostly. Paul encourages us with this:
God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions
Good news, healing is on the way.
- Curtis