Poison Spreads

So, a few weeks ago I was helping out at a backyard Bible club when I was stung by a yellow jacket on my left ankle. There were yellow jackets everywhere at this apartment complex and I had somehow escaped getting stung the two days before, but on the third night, I wasn’t so lucky. To top it all off, I am allergic to yellow jackets, and of course was not carrying my epi-pen with me. That night I only had a small allergic reaction and the swelling was only the size of a quarter. But, as things go, the next day my leg and ankle had swollen to the size of a dollar and a red streak was running down my leg toward my veins, indicative of a medical condition called cellulitis. Cellulitis is when toxins seep into your veins (which run to your heart) and then spread to the rest of your body through your blood stream, and can be fatal. So, I got on the phone and called my Doctor and got a prescription medication right away. I’m happy to report that after a week, all the swelling and redness disappeared.

I wanted to tell you the above story, so that you would have a better understanding of the life lesson that God taught me through this experience. You see, there are things in our lives that can be like the yellow jacket poison. If we get stung by it, and don’t get medicine to treat it quickly, then it will continue to spread until it gets into our bloodstream, and eventually kills us. Maybe greed, pride, jealousy, bitterness, etcetera creeps in and when we recognize it we think that we can handle it, yet we all know that we can’t, so it begins to spread. The only way to keep it from spreading is to call upon the true Healer, Jesus, who takes those sins upon Himself on our behalf. He reminds us that we might have scars from the sting, but that we have once again been spared from something far worse. Our hearts may be small in size, but it is the most powerful and vital organ in the body. So, what are you allowing to flow to it? Poison or God’s love?