Sickness has come to my little home this past week, a most unwelcome visitor. I’m usually a pretty active person. No, I don’t run marathons, but I spread myself around my little world in a bunch of ways. Having a strong and debilitating virus strike me down like a bowling ball does to pins is a humbling experience.
Last Sunday evening, I felt odd and thought to myself, “Something’s not right. Father, if I’m getting sick, please help me to fight it off. Life’s too busy !”
Midweek, I lay like a sad sack in my bed, feeling like one big toothache. Lapsing in and out of sleep, I prayed, “ Father, if this is the way you want me to leave this world, I’ll obey. But, Father ? If this is the way, please hurry things up ! I hurt all over and I can’t breath and that choking thing that happened last night scared me !“
By the end of the week, I was coughing so hard that I thought I’d pop a blood vessel in my brain and ‘stroke out’ of this miserable existence. My prayers changed. “Father, I am in such distress. Please show me grace ! Take this sickness away ! “
And still, I cough … and cough … and cough. I wait for healing and I trust that in time my body will be given the boost it needs. I have to keep the faith, for right now there seems little else, which leads me to my contemplation of the poor Assyrian and Babylonian exiles of old and how pained and lonely they felt in their enslavement. My petty RSV infection is nothing compared to the long and bitter enslavement of those peoples. What makes us common in our pain, is our faith that God will not desert us. We will always have God watching over us, no matter the ugly circumstances of our predicaments. We must always keep that in mind. In the meantime, we must also make tea, sip soup, drink water, and wait upon the Lord.
This, I believe.
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