Festering Wounds

    Traveling by train gives me a lot of time to think and today I was thinking about gross things: festering wounds and maggots. I was thinking about how even the smallest wounds, when untreated, can become a bed of destruction; a place where a fly lands, lays its larvae, they hatch and become maggots which immediately begin to feed on whatever food source they’ve been given. The wound festers, the maggots consume, and the flesh is eaten away, leaving chaos for the body and/or a physician to attempt to repair. And all of that rotten filth and ravaging of the body could have been prevented by basic care: washing of the wound, antibacterials, bandaids, etc. But for various reasons, people become neglectful of themselves, whether it be lack of water in poverty stricken countries, or homelessness as a result of alcoholism or drugs, etc. Sometimes, they’re too entrenched in other problems to worry about what seems to be a minor nuisance. And before they know it, they’re facing another huge problem with no easy solution.

    

    And what this leaves me with is a perfectly disgusting and yet accurate picture of sin. I’ve been thinking a lot about sin lately and about the garbage that I offer up to God. I’ve got some rotten garbage in my life(most of us do, if we’re honest with ourselves) and I hate that sometimes it’s all I seem to be able to offer Him. “Here God, you said you want my burdens, so can you please carry my filthy waste around for me?” I don’t want the garbage, I really don’t, and I know that I’m growing in my relationship with and my knowledge and understanding of Him. Perhaps that’s why I seem to be more and more aware of my garbage. Or maybe I’m just sick of it. I don’t know. Regardless, sometime I feel like I’m swimming in the same garbage over and over and over again. I mean, seriously, this stinks. Festering wounds and maggots. Preventative care is so incredibly important, because once a wound is open, it can fester quietly for a long, long time- and sin is the same way.

   

    What hope is left for me, for you, as depraved humans? Ah, that’s right. I have something, or rather someone, that gives not only Hope, but who has given me the strength to withstand. I have a relationship with the Great Physician, who not only wants to take care of my current wounds, but who wants to clean and bandage and heal my old wounds. Not only that, but He sincerely wants me to let Him carry all of the garbage that I try to carry by myself, because His death covers all of my past, present, and future garbage. He died for me, because He knew that I could never get rid of that garbage on my own.

   

    What amazing love: that He would want my broken, filthy self and my inadequate offerings and that He can take all of that and turn it into something beautiful. Beauty from refuse; transforming me into what He wants me to be- bit by bit, step by step, one day at a time.