I look into the mirror each morning and run my fingers
through my tussled hair. The eyes looking back at me are puffy and vacillate
between watery/itchy and dry/itchy. My nose hurts all the time. It is in a constant
state of itchy and painful. My head throbs from one side of my face to the
other. My ears hurt to a point of distraction. Certain I had an ear infection
before, I’ve made the trek to the doctor only to be told, no ear infection, it’s
the tubes in front of my ears that are plugged causing the pain.
I am an allergy sufferer. I walk around with a roll of
tissue in my hand most of the time. I am like millions of others prone to
allergies. The trees and beautiful flora I love so much do not treat me kindly.
I am allergic to them. If it grows in Texas,
chances are, I’m allergic to it. At least that is what the allergy test says
and I have the long, painful history of sneezes and sinus headaches to prove it.
Fall is my favorite time of the year. I love the colors, the
pleasant days when it ceases to be too hot and, throwing caution to the wind, I
open up my house and let the fall breezes…and all the little fall allergens
blow right on in. “They”, the all knowing albeit unknown experts, say you
should keep your windows closed if you suffer with allergies. Mine are not
seasonal, they live here all year long, so I cannot accept their conventional
wisdom or I would never have any pleasure from the great outdoors.
As I sneezed my way through cooking breakfast earlier, it
occurred to me that we are lucky God doesn’t make our personal sins as obvious
as allergy symptoms. Can you imagine how we would look if our ungodly thoughts
gave off a red vapor out the top of our heads? What if our eyes shed tears of
blood if we looked at that which is unpleasing to God? Imagine what our hands
could look like if stained with a dye (like that used on stolen money from a
bank) every time we touched something forbidden and sinful. What if our noses
grew, like Pinocchio’s, when we were not exactly telling the whole truth? Wouldn’t
be so easy to hide all our dirty little secrets, would it?
This begs the question…Since God knows all things before we
ever do or think them, have we admitted to ourselves it is other PEOPLE from
which we are hiding them? AND, Are we putting their opinions of us before God -
because we haven’t stopped the bad behavior to please God, just work to hide it
from people? Is it okay to rationalize our behavior because God will love us
and accept us anyway but other people will judge us so we must, MUST hide our little
secrets so they will think better of us? Are we taking God for granted if we
assume He overlooks those sins even if true repentance has not yet changed our
hearts and actions? Do we act as if God can’t see through our Hide & Seek
game? I’m just asking…
Most people can take an allergy pill of some sort to relieve
the symptoms. Due to a funky heartbeat, I can’t. Thus, my apparent year round
love affair with tissue. Sin symptoms can’t be relieved with a pill either. There
is, however, a prescription for them:
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