APPENDICITIS
Can you live with a ruptured appendix? I have a friend who did. Admirably she put up with the belly tenderness and pain for over ten days. She thought she was getting better. Oh yes! The pain was much improved over the sharp, double-you-over attacks of the previous week.
No, she hadn’t had it checked out. There was no health insurance, you understand. With the onset of pain she treated it the way she treated every other complaint. Cut back on sugar, drank lots of water, fasted a bit. Then, a day or two later, there was that unexpected POOF! and the sudden release from pain. The blessed, soul-reviving release from pain.
Initially she felt better, much better, except that the belly remained tender and her appetite suppressed. When the malaise grew and she spiked a low-grade fever, she intensified her regime.
Finally, almost ten days after the POOF, she confided in a nurse friend. “You may have a ruptured appendix. Let’s take a look,” was the nurse’s reply. She asked my friend to lie prone and did the familiar press-and-release technique in the lower right quadrant of my friend’s all too tender belly. The subsequent yell confirmed the nurse’s diagnosis. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
My friend lived to tell the tale, but only after a prolonged hospital stay which included big gun antibiotics for the septic state the hospital personnel found her in.
Sin causes pain. The pain may be exhibited by a guilty conscience, strained relationships, laws broken, addictions, depression.
JUST LIKE WITH A RUPTURED APPENDIX, SURGERY IS ALWAYS NECESSARY TO HEAL FROM SIN.
Just like with a ruptured appendix, surgery is always necessary to heal from sin. God’s Word gives us this promise of a Surgeon, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”1
Are you struggling with a growing malaise of spirit? The underlying thought that “Yup. I got what I had coming to me?” The depressing miasma that life will never have the zest it had in simpler times? Maybe you need to have a talk with the Savior. “Listen! The Lord’s arm is not too weak to save you, nor is his ear too deaf to hear you call. It’s your sins that have cut you off from God.”2
Luckily, he’s a tender God. Your brokenness does not surprise him or cause him to turn away. “He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle. ”3 Take a few minutes today, and have a talk with the God of the universe. You’ll find him more approachable than you thought.
1Ezekiel 36:26
2Isaiah 59:1-2
3 Isaiah 42:3