My husband has many sayings – phrases or sentences – for which he is well known, for example: serious yellow, which I just taught to three rambunctious preteen boys. (It’ll have to be explained at a later time.) But the one that comes to mind today is “God will let you die if you are stupid.”
I’m thinking about it in relation to recent, tragic death from a head injury acquired in a skiing accident of the actress Natasha Richardson. She was relatively young (seen from my 50-year-old eyes anyway), beautiful, smart, talented, wealthy, athletic (or at least fit) and healthy. She died, when she could have survived, because she thought she was okay when she wasn’t.
Reports say that she turned away an ambulance, saying she was fine. Indeed, she felt fine and, for a while, acted just fine. But she was NOT okay. The trauma to the head was worse than she knew. A CT scan could have told that. The results of the injury worsened while giving no warning. If she was in the hospital under observation they might have caught the worsening symptoms. I grieve for any family experiencing the loss of a loved one.
The Spiritual lesson for Christians is that we cannot assume we are okay when, in fact, we are not. On our own we are NEVER okay. We need God to be okay. Without God, we are destined for death, we are lost, we are condemned, we are not okay. But we may not know it. Without God’s word, the Bible, we don’t know what sin is or even that we are sinners. Without the Holy Spirit we are not convicted of our sin (John 16:8). Without the sacrifice of Jesus, our sin cannot be removed (John 1:29) – we cannot be healed (Isaiah 53:5) – we cannot be restored to relationship with the Father – we cannot have life, let alone abundant life (John 10:10).
It is the Passover season – a time when we can and should focus on exactly how un-okay we are – a time to focus on our need for external help. It is a time to examine our lives and evaluate our progress.
The word of God is our CT scan. The Holy Spirit is our monitoring system. God is our doctor – the judge of whether or not we are well. Jesus is our life-saving medicine. Don’t turn them away.
God will let you die if you are stupid and turn away the help offered to you – although He is going to do everything He can to get you to accept the help you need. He just won’t throw you forcibly into the ambulance.
Don’t be stupid.
Love, Nancy
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