Sunday message- diabetes and the devil

When you are fighting type 2 diabetes, as the Doc says I am, there are three weapons in your arsenal- meds, diet, and exercise.  In a lot of ways, a Christian is fighting a similar battle with the same three weapons.

For example, say you are a Christian who doesn't walk the walk real well- you don't stay in the Word, you don't share the fruits, you don't separate yourself from your sinful past.  That is like a T2D who doesn't do any of the three things they need to.  What happens?  Yes, the number on the glucose meter goes up.  But there's more to it.

You begin to feel the results of your sin around the edges.  The fingers and toes start to tingle, then lose feeling.  Other health problems start to show up.  Soon enough, your ability to feel, move about, even see, is compromised.  Doesn't make you less OF a person, makes you a less ABLE person.  And the do-nothing Christian shows the same symptoms.  "I don't feel like giving to the collection/charity drive/ my time."  "I just can't make it to Church/ to hear a sermon/ to my knees to pray every morning."  "I don't see the point..."


See the point?

So, you have to take meds every day- for the Christian, that is reading your Bible.  Staying in the word is that critical, and I truly need one of these things for my Bible reading like I have for my pills:

But those pills, left on their own, get overloaded. To really get the glucose meter to give you happy numbers, you need to exercise.  Scrappy and I have doubled our walks most of our holiday time off (but I gotta take it easy on him- he's an "old bumpy guy", and while his brains say he can walk forever, his gimpy limpyness after the fact say not so fast.) and I have been using the new exercycle fairly regularly (if only for 15-minute bursts).  To the Christian, that is the "walking the walk" part- praying, counselling, minding the way of obedience.  The fruits of the spirit in use.

But guess what?  Even with the extra exercise, I've gained a bit of weight during this time off.  Mainly because, as my co-workers can tell you, my "lunch" when I'm working is a pack of pop tarts.  At home, I go from very-light lunch- good size dinner-snack before bed to good size lunch-good size dinner- snack, plus other snacks liberally spread in.  In addition, I veer off the things I should eat into things I should avoid in ever-increasing quantities.  To the Christian, we each have certain things we should involve ourselves in only in moderation, and others we should avoid altogether.  Things that lead us to other, worse things.

So the program for T2D is meds, exercise, and diet.  For Type 2 Devil-beat-us, the cure is Bible time, fruit-time, and staying out of, as we used to pray in Catholic school, "the near-occasion of sin."  And since my case of the latter gives me more problems than the former, perhaps I got the T2D- and you have whatever problem you have- for a reason.  Take the problem and learn from it, and while you may not succeed with your aging, failing body, you might in something far more important.