Thick and Thin

Today my blood is 2.4 times thinner than your blood. Which is good and the way it should be. But as I eat my way through the next six weeks until the next blood test, it will thin and thicken depending on how many avocados and mangoes, how much kale and spinach, how much red wine I consume. It is an inexact science maintaining a safe level, but for over a decade now it’s been ok so I sit down to each meal trusting that as long as I eat in moderation, it should all be ok. 

Rat poison is the best the doctors can do. It sounds pretty crass and basic, but so far, so good. I am grateful for it.

Health is an element of life which can be a hole, a stumbling place in a walk with the Lord. I am blessed in that mine is a quiet background condition, unlike the many painful and intrusive conditions which afflict people. How one feels can dominate one’s thoughts and perspectives, understandably so. Some of the reason is the intrusiveness of pain on one’s consciousness, and some is fear. 

I can only imagine the devastating agony of constant pain and so am not qualified to say anything about that. But I do know about fear. When I got the pulmonary emboli all those years ago, I found myself fearful of many things. 

I am focusing on Isaiah 40 right now, and those opening verses speak to fear. ‘Level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places.’ The curves speak to me of the unknown, the future, out of sight and around the corner. How to straighten them out? 

With God. There is no fear in love and God is perfect love. When I spend time with him, I know that whatever lies around any curve, as long as I go round it with him everything is always going to be ok. In God I trust. And as my faith deepens and my trust grows, the curves straighten out and the fear loses its hold on me.

May you walk through this day with courage and faith in the God who loves you truly, madly and deeply.

Father God

What word would you associate with ‘teenager’? I imagine that many of us would immediately respond ‘rebellious’. I know I would.

We raised four wonderful kids who are our best friends, but it wasn’t always like that. There were a few years in there where they chafed against restrictions, where they were moody and longing for more freedoms than we were prepared to grant, and where tension at meal times was commonplace. 

At those times, I doubt that any would have agreed that we were drawing boundaries because we loved them so much. 

Now God is our heavenly Father. He loves the world so much – everyone in it – that he gave his most precious possession, his only son, to come and live among us and make a way for us to be restored to friendship and intimacy with him. We, his children, have been acting like rebellious teenagers ever since we bit into that bit of fruit in the garden, and there was no way we could ‘hang out’ with God. 

He wanted to hang out with us, because despite our rebelliousness, he still loves us. Well, that’s not so hard to understand, as I know that despite our kids’ rebelliousness, we still loved them. (we didn’t always like them, though!) So Jesus came into the world, paid the price for our sins on the cross – took the punishment which we deserve – and there is now no condemnation for any of us who invite Jesus to be our Lord. No condemnation. Jesus paid it all.

So when we are truly sorry for our sins, there is no condemnation, no punishment. We are restored to intimacy with God without doing time first. 

A survey in the US revealed that ¾ of the participants thought of God as judgmental, scary, and distant. But one quarter recognised that God is love. And Scripture says there is no room for fear in love. He loves us. He doesn’t want to punish. He wants us to love him, but to do so freely, of our own volition, not because we are forced or coerced into it. 

He wants us to choose to love him, and when we love someone, we want to please him/her. We want to serve. We want to tell others about how wonderful that person is.

Or in this case, God.

He is. He is love. He is amazing. He loves you with an everlasting love. Wow.