Chemo

"I'm not going to Chemo today -- last week, that patient next to me was so rude, I'm not going back there."

"Well, I was going to take little Billy to Chemo today, but he just doesn't have much fun there, so we'll go to the lake instead."

"Well, I know I should go to my Chemo appointment, but you just know how busy we are today."

I highly doubt that anyone reading this has ever heard any of those lines before.  Why?  Because they are patently stupid.  If you need to go to Chemo... you go.  Your life is at stake.  It doesn't matter if the guy in the waiting room is mean, or if it isn't fun, or if you are busy -- you go, otherwise you are going to die.

I will bet that most folks reading this blog have, though heard things like, "Well, I'm not going to Church, so and so was so rude to me.  Besides, Billy doesn't have fun, and we are so busy the rest of the week."

Here is the problem with society, with the Church today.  We don't think we are sick, we don't realize that we are terminal.  We don't want to see the wages of sin in our life - and we deny the approach of death.  We don't see Church as that place where God comes and gives us life in the midst of a world of death.

No, instead we see Church not in terms of life or death, but in terms of... nicety.  It's a little finishing school where I, the good person, can learn to be a bit better.  It's the place to show just how good I am.  It's not even the icing on the cake, it's the sprinkles -- so, if something at Church isn't just so -- if someone isn't nice, or there's a bit of whining, or there's fun to be had elsewhere -- well, it's nice to go to the lake, or nice to spend time with the family - we might as well do that.

You don't go to Church because you are nice, because it's nice, or to help make you nicer.

You are dying.  The grave is not far off.  And Christ Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  You need that, you need that even moreso than the Chemo patient needs her treatment.  The Church doesn't give you a poison that it hopes will kill the cancer before the cancer kills you - it gives you Christ Jesus, the Bread of Life, the Medicine of Immortality.

John 1:4-5, 9-13 "In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.....  The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. ¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. ¹¹ He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. ¹² But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."

We all need Christ, we need Him desperately - and only the lies and delusions of Satan would have us think differently.