The effects of sin are evident in the world through illness, disease, sadness, loneliness and all other kinds of disordered things.
My son recently had some surgery done to his mouth. It was dental surgery, but an invasive sort of surgery and involved treatment on several parts of his mouth at once, so there was really no comfortable spot on which he could eat his food for some time, while he was recovering from the surgery.
After the surgery, when he awoke form surgery, his mouth and the whole lower part of his face was numb. Because this was the case, he felt terribly uncomfortable because he was not used to the feeling of being unable to feel that part of his own body.
When he complained about this to the surgeon following the surgery and the post operative care, the surgeon laughed and said, “Oh, you feel numb do you? Well, enjoy it while it lasts.”
Now, my son had never had surgery before – thank God – and this means that he really did not understand the implications of what the surgeon was implying when he was told to enjoy this uncomfortable feeling of numbness. However, when he woke up the next morning, he was certainly aware of what this was and what was involved in this. Clearly that numbness had been a welcome break from the terrible pain that was to come and meant that he was able to shield himself from the worst of the suffering that was to result the following day.
And I have been thinking about that today, as I have been thinking about sin and the impacts and effects of sin.
You see, when we sin, we go against the Holy Will of God, and when that happens it means that we cause suffering. We cause suffering to God by disrupting His perfect plan, and we cause suffering to ourselves because through that disruption of God’s plan for us, we literally wreck our own happy ending. We get in the way of our own salvation and therefore cause ourselves our misery.
And the effects of sin are evident in the world through illness, disease, sadness, loneliness and all other kinds of disordered things. And while this is not to say that if I – or anyone else – is sick or sad or lonely that this disorder is a PERSONAL consequence for our PERSONAL sin, it is to say that the existence of all these things is as a result of sin in the world.
And I have been thinking about that, because that surgery is like the effect of sin – it the thing that must be done to repair the problem. And the consequence of sin is like the pain after the surgery. At first the pain is numbed – while we live on this Earth. We might feel numb to the pain we are causing through sin, but the pain is still there. And when we wake up in eternity, the full effects of that sin and the pain it caused will be there. And we will feel them in every part of us. And this is what I have been thinking about today.
For it seems I have been numb to the pain I am causing through my sins for the whole of my Earthly life…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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