Medicine

Lily is such a smart lady! Recently her family was completely violated in the worst way. I had sent her family a card with a bunch of verses about God's love, healing and perseverance. I saw her at church on Sunday. Lily was very thankful for the card and verses. She read the card to all of her kids. I explained that the verses stemmed from a study I had done late in 2004 because I was trying to figure out from a Biblical perspective why life can be so crappy sometimes and what to do about it. What I found was pages upon pages of verses about God helping people who cry out to him, what the eternal purpose of suffering is, and God's profuse love for his people.

I explained to Lily that the verses didn't really seem to make much of a difference at the time. I didn't feel any better, but it was truth and I was going to agree with what the Bible said about the situation.

She remarked, "Doing the study was like taking medicine when you are sick. You might not feel better when you are taking them and by the time you are well, you don't realize it was the pills that made you feel better."

Wow! We are so accustomed to a quick fix or instant gratification we sometimes expect to get done reading the Bible and feel instanly better. When it takes a while for the truths to take hold and change our perspective, by the time we are changed we probably don't even realize it was from giving ourselves the remedy of biblical truth.