The Body of Christ

The whole congregation of believers was united as one--one heart, one mind! They didn't even claim ownership of their own possessions. No one said, "That's mine; you can't have it." They shared everything. The apostles gave powerful witness to the resurrection of the Master Jesus, and grace was on all of them. And so it turned out that not a person among them was needy. Those who owned fields or houses sold them and brought the price of the sale to the apostles and made an offering of it. The apostles then distributed it according to each person's need.

(Act 4:32-35 MSG)

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

(Rom 12:4-5 NRSV)

If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

(1Co 12:26-27 NRSV)

I cannot imagine suffering through an experience such as we have without the love and support of family and loved ones. I mentioned in an earlier post that if you are part of our life, Patty and I consider you family whether kin or not. We have lots of kin but a huge family. Most of that family is the body of Christ. I thank God that most of our blood kin are also part of the body of Christ.

As Christians, we have a bond that goes much deeper than blood. We are united through the love of God, the blood of Christ, and the witness of the Holy Spirit. The spirit of Christian love has poured out on us in this situation like nothing I could have ever imagined. Your kindness and generosity is overwhelming. We are in a hospital one hour away from home and we have 33 pages in a notebook filled with the names of those who have visited or called. I could not even begin to count the text messages, e-mails, and Facebook comments that I have received. We have had as many as seven preachers visit in one day. During Patty’s surgery on Monday, four Methodist and one Church of God preacher stopped by. We have a large bag nearly full of cards and letters. We have had meals brought to us and several gift baskets of snacks. This type of outpouring of love just doesn’t exist in non-Christian secular families.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

(Joh 13:34-35 NRSV)

Sadly, not everyone shares in this bond we Christians have. There are folks here in this ICU who have had very few if any visitors and the few they have are only their immediate family. They have had no one to pray for or with them.

I lift up in prayer this morning those who are suffering illness without a church family to pray for them. I lift up in prayer this morning those of my kin who lack a loving relationship with our Savior Jesus Christ. I praise God this morning for the Body of Christ which demonstrates the love of Christ by sharing that love with others.

The Will of God

From "The Will of God" by Leslie Weatherhead:

Again and again, when people ask, "Is it the will of God?" I think we shall have to separate the subject in order to make an intelligent answer.

Consider, for example, the matter of disease. The Christian minister is continually confronted, as he does his visiting, by the question as to whether the onset of disease is the will of God. The important answer is No. The will of God for man is perfect health. Other things being equal, God can use a body free from disease more effectively than a diseased body. Jesus would not have been a great spiritual asset in his early ministry if he had been lame or diabetic or tubercular. But there is a will within evil circumstances; and let every sufferer who may happen to read these lines realize that if he makes the right reaction to these circumstances, the ultimate will of God will be reached as effectively as if he had not been ill. God would not allow cancer, if of itself, it had the power to defeat him.

The point may be seen, perhaps, by thinking of these diseases which are due to an invasion of germs. I suppose God is responsible for the creation of the germs, even the germs of disease. Why they are created I don't know. It may be that they serve some good function about which we know nothing. It may be that they have served, in the evolutionary process, some good function. I don't think anybody knows the answer to that question. If these germs invade a body the resistance of which evil circumstances have lowered, then the result is disease; and that disease you can call, if you like, the circumstantial will of God. But it is the will of God only within the circumstances created by evil.

Here again let me repeat that that circumstantial will can be viewed from two angles - the first natural, the second spiritual. There is the physical condition which we call disease; but, second, there is the possibility of the patient's making such a splendid response to that circumstance that he creates out of it a spiritual asset in the community of much more value than most people's health. It is because the saints have thus reacted to evil that the fallacy has got about that disease and suffering are the will of God. Let me put it this way. Given a spiritual awakening so glorious that the personality lives in close co-operation with God, the healthy body is more in line with his will. But so many healthy people are spiritually asleep and are not co-operating with him at all, and so many sick people, have, through the sickness, become spiritually awakened during their illness that out of the circumstances of evil they have created and set free spiritual energies far more valuable than the spiritual apathy of the healthy person.

I am quite sure that the battle against disease is the will of God, and I thank God for all those people who are taking part in it. In olden days in this country, wolves used to descend from the woods upon a village and do a great deal of harm. But our sturdy forefathers did not call the invasion of the wolves "the will of God." They called up all their resources, and they "liquidated" the wolves. When the community is set upon by an invasion of germs, that is not the will of God. The situation is just the same. You may tell me that the animals are smaller and the germs of disease can be seen only through a microscope, but the problem is the same, and the battle is the same. I cannot understand how anybody who has read the New Testament can ever stand at the bedside of a patient, and without explaining himself, utter the pathetic complaint that disease is the will of God. I always imagine that Jesus would speak with anger about such a thoughtless dictum. When a woman was brought to him who had been ill for a long time, he spoke of her as "this woman ... whom Satan hath bound, lo, those eighteen years." Satan! As far as I can understand Jesus' attitude, but in the words he spoke and the healing miracles he so gloriously wrought, he always regarded disease as part of the kingdom of evil, and with all his powers he fought it and instructed his followers to do the same.

I like to think of our Lord standing by the bedside of the patient and working with the doctors and nurses toward the regaining of health, working on the mind and spirit of the patient as the physicians work on the body. Then if the latter fail, I like to think of him showing the sufferer that, in co-operation with him, victory may still be wrested from defeat and the purposes of God realized.

One final thought. If you say, "Well, it's a bit casual of God to allow these things to happen if they are not his intention," I agree that there is mystery there. It would be foolish to speak as if all the ways of God to men were clear. I should not like to give the impression that I could make a glib answer to any specific case of suffering that was brought to my notice. I too am often appalled at the suffering people endure, and especially little children.

Yet I wonder if, in a sense, we are not all in the position of little children. I can imagine a child looking up to his own father who loves him, and saying to him, "Don' t you think you are rather casual to let me get hurt the way you do?" I amused myself, as I thought about this, by imagining a mass meeting of tiny toddlers who magically had the gift of putting their thoughts into words. Think of them, if you like, crowded into a great hall, with a little toddler as chairman, who adjusting his bib, addresses his fellow toddlers in some such way as this: "I am sure my parents don't care. Look at my knees!" but we do say, "Look at my frustration and sorrow and disappointment and pain! How can you be so callous, and how do you expect us to think you care?" Perhaps childhood's tragedies are to us what our tragedies are to God - not that he is callous any more than the ideal parent is, but that his perspective is different. But the thought that comforts the child comforts me. If the child thought about it, I think he would say, "There is much I don't understand, but I know that my father both loves and cares." So, for myself, I am quite certain that because God is love there is nothing in his world that can be regarded as meaningless torture. There is much I cannot understand. There must be much that I cannot be made to understand until I have passed out of childhood's stage. But because I know him through other means, and especially as revealed in Jesus, I know that although I cannot understand the answer to my questions, there is an answer, and in that I can rest content.

Time keeps on slippin'

Time gets weird in the ICU. I find it difficult to grasp that we have been here for fourteen days now. It seems like just yesterday that we rode the ambulance over from Donalsonville. And then again it feels like forever since the BAD day.

Even though the doctors won’t use the word stable, we had hoped that after the orotracheal intubation and the insertion of the chest tube things would settle down a bit and Patty could begin to rest and heal.

Not to be.

On Tuesday afternoon, April 13, we had our worst crisis yet. Patty’s blood oxygen level and blood pressure suddenly and drastically dropped. This was probably caused by a pulmonary embolism. They had to remove Patty from the ventilator and manually “bag” her for over an hour before being able to stabilize her vitals and reconnect the ventilator.

The dedicated health care professionals did not give up and saved Patty’s life.

That was the worst day for me. I had convinced myself that this was “just the flu” and after a few days it would run its course and we would go home. This is not “just the flu”. This is the hellfire and brimstone of influenza.

So we count the days in many ways. Fourteen days in ICU on the Ventilator. Hospitalized for sixteen days. Fifteen days since I last was able to talk to Patty. Twenty days since she first became ill. Twenty one days since we last did a P90X workout. How many more days we’ll count only God knows.

Then I think about how this time has gone for Patty. The Doctor says that she’ll not remember any of this. But I cannot imagine what she is going to think when I tell her, “Patty, you’ve been here, unconscious for ­­­_______ weeks." Life was progressing along fairly routinely and then BAM, struck by lightning.

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture--"I believed, and so I spoke"--we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.

(2Co 4:7-18 NRSV)

Amen.