The Flu

I have suffered with the flu over the past week, but I think I am past the worst of it now. Last Sunday night I knew it was coming and by Monday I was coughing and feverish. Tuesday and Wednesday I was seriously ill and I pretty much stayed in bed. Thursday I was finally able to work again and I've been improving ever since. I still have a cough, but at least I don't feel fevered.

Isn't it amazing that a microscopic virus can have such an effect? There I was a week and a half ago - complacent in my health and vigor. Then the little bug infected me and laid me low. I am glad that my immune system was in working order. I am also glad that I was blessed to recover fairly quickly without developing pneumonia, requiring hospitalization and/or dying.

Sorry if that sounds morbid, but the fact is that the flu still kills quite a few people. Geraldine Iversen used to tell about when she was a little girl during the 1918 flu pandemic. She said that every family was effected and many people in her small town died. It was one of the things that started her thinking about eternity. She saw, even at an early age, that people died fairly easily. She realized that she needed to know what would happen after she died.

We may live in post-modern times, but one of the relics of modernity is clinging to us. People are SURE that modern science will conquer death. It is hard to tell if people are tremendously confident or panic stricken in their assertions that cures for everything can be, should be or will be discovered in the next few years - certainly in not more than a decade.

Which leads me to my continuing belief that modern science still doesn't know what life IS. Scientists can describe the characteristics of living organisms - but they still can't tell what makes one organism alive and one next to it dead. Life itself is beyond science. The scientist can experiment on living organisms and find things that make them react, adapt, reproduce or perhaps die. But they can never catch the spark that IS life.

Life is a divine prerogative. The Living God is the source of all life. He lets His creatures play with the stuff He created, but He reserves the prerogative of life itself. Dr. Frankenstein can stitch his monsters together out of borrowed parts, but he still has no way to bring them to life. Life comes from God and is lent to us at God's pleasure. When Adam chose death to obedience, God graciously provided a second chance - eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Stay well!

He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son.
And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1John 5:10-12)

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1:4-5)