A Disease Called Sin

I have a friend who was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes last year. She’s my age. When she was diagnosed it was pretty hard for her to swallow, but she overcame the initial shock and learned to live with it. However, just the other night she and her boyfriend were driving back to campus from eating out. Lately her blood sugar has been an on-going battle and it’s been a little rough for her. He was trying to tell her that everything was going to be OK, her body would get used to it, but then it smacked her right in the face. She was going to have to fight this battle for the rest of her life. Her body will never get used to having this disease. Every day she has to prick her finger and check her sugar levels 5 times a day, and most, if not all meals, she has to take her insulin. She will have times when her disease isn’t wrecking havoc on her body, but then there will also be those times where she feels miserable or is sick for the rest of her life.

It kind of reminds me of sin. Sin is something that we all learn about and know that we do, but we’re taught to strive for perfection and not to sin. Has it hit you yet though that we will always be fighting this battle? Some times in our lives will be better than others, when there might be less temptation for us, or when we feel God’s grace more present in our lives than others. However, there will always be those times when our battle with sin will be almost too difficult for us to bare or deal with. Just like when diabetics check their sugar levels, so should us sinners. We need to check our sin by examination of conscious. This time of lent is nearly upon us and what a great opportunity it is for us to step back for at least a couple seconds a couple times a day- even if you’re driving, walking, or waiting somewhere- and check our levels. How have we given God glory? How have we offended Him that day?

Prayer and acts of love and are like the insulin and help us to regulate this "disease." They are not cures though. We can never actually overcome this disease of our nature by our own means, but there is a cure for it. We don't have it though. Our Pharmacist in heaven is the only one who has it can give it to us. The devil might temp you with his double fudge cake and tell you that the better it tastes, the better it is for yourself, but in truth that sweet, delicious cake will do some serious damage to you. It might be difficult to resist it, but we must. Willingly offering ourselves to be stabbed with that needle of medicine might be painful, but it's totally worth it. After all, Someone else already offered themselves to suffer a much worse pain.