'It's like you were born again!

It's an odd reality that in life there are times when the only way to progress comes through finding the ability to stand still! So often we find ourselves talking about great advances made in some area or the other. Today the news has been filled with the news that a man whose spinal cord was severed has had it repaired and is walking and driving again. Darek Fidyka, speaking of his feelings towards the treatment he had received said, "When you can't feel almost half your body, you are helpless, but when it starts coming back it's like you were born again."

Darek's words struck me because for many of us we can remember a time when we were living lives in which we were out of touch with our feelings, unable to control our bodies or regulate our thinking, and it was the coming into relationship with God, the Father, through the actions of Jesus, the Christ, that caused us also to be able to say, "We were helpless and were out of touch with ourselves and the surroundings around us until we met Jesus and, regaining our senses and right mind, it was like being born again!"

Today as we celebrate the first steps of a man for whom medicine has made so much difference I wonder how many of us can remember what it was like when were were were out of control and distant from God? Much more so I wonder how many of us have stopped to check that we're still in touch with 'all of ourselves' because I meet so many Christians who are obviously not living as believers in all departments; so many who limbs, brains and tongues most definitely function wrongly and over which they too apparently have no control!

My prayer is that those who claim to be 'Christian' (beginning with me) will take the time to see which part of their body, and their lives, they are out of touch with in terms of Christian living. How many of us are not standing tall, walking straight or thinking rightly because the connections between them and God - their intentions and realities - are severed or severely limited?

I leave us all with the words of Paul (Romans 7) where he says:

Now, which finger do you choose to use?

"I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."
As we celebrate medical advances I pray that we will, by examining ourselves, make advances in our own lives and the way that we have control of our whole body and mind.

Pax