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Body Suffering

by Jerry Ousley  
8/22/2009 / Christian Living

I smashed my finger with a hammer one time (in other words, I hit the wrong nail). The first thing that happened was that my finger started throbbing. It hurt. The next thing that happened was that it hit my brain. I got a message that said, "Uh-oh; you just hit your finger with the hammer." My immediate response was to lift my throbbing finger from the board I had been pounding a nail into, hold it up in front of my face and look at it while my mouth was beginning to open. The finger was red as a vine ripened tomato but there was no blood. But still it throbbed. It felt like on cartoons when someone would hit their finger and it would actually swell up to about three times its size then contract back to normal with each throb of pain.

The next thing that happened over which I felt I had no control was that as my mouth dropped open a horrific scream issued forth from my lips. In instant response I felt my legs beginning to shove my body up from the floor. The next thing I knew I was hopping up and down, shouting (not profanity, mind you) and moving in a rhythmic fashion which left me thinking to myself, "Man, I didn't know I could sing and dance like that!" This all happened in a matter of a very few seconds.

The point to this is that when we physically hurt ourselves it affects our whole body. Our mind tells the rest of our body what to do and even though the pain might be in a tooth, a finger, or an elbow, the rest of the body reacts even though it isn't hurting. It is a natural reaction to pain and in one form or another, we all do it. A hurting member of our body can ruin the entire day for all our other body parts.

Folks, because we are all members of the Body of Christ, and because of the bond of love that holds us together, it should be the same with Christians. We should be so connected that when one of us is going through a trial, a sickness, or a disease, we react just like it is happening to us. That's tough to do sometimes because it requires us to live in someone else's shoes. It's easy, especially when certain things don't affect us like it does others, to shrug it off and say something like, "He's just being a baby; that's such a simple thing!" But when we do that we're forgetting about those things that really bother us. When the shoe is on the other foot we can't understand why people don't show us a bit of grace. It goes both ways. It's time that Christian people learn to hurt with others.

But then there's something else to consider as well. There are times when we do feel the pain of others. In those times we want to do whatever we can to help them. We want to protect them. But what we instinctively want to do may not always be the right thing to do. For instance, when we get a mosquito bite on our arm the first thing our hand wants to do is to reach up and scratch it. That's not always the best thing to do. Germs on our hands and under our fingernails, depending on what we were doing before we got the bite, may make the bite worse than it was before. It could get infected and cause a bigger problem.

So how do we know what to do and when to do it? That's where our education comes in. When we realize, as in the case of that mosquito bite for instance, that what we really need to do is to put some anti-bacterial ointment or cream on it which will relieve the itch but also keep germs from getting in. It takes education to know that (maybe not a college degree but we have to know it from somewhere). It is the same in the Body of Christ. We need to pray, study God's word, and seek the Lord so that we can be a help to the rest of the Body. When we are listening to God, are bound together by real love, and seek to do our job, then the Body of Christ functions like a well maintained and well oiled machine. It will get the job done and done efficiently. Let's take our place in the Body, feel the pain of others, and do what God has taught us to do, what do you say?

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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