Deadly Serious

After writing an article about dealing with the H1N1 virus and the misinformation that is causing a sort of alarmist attitude in the nation and the world and some practical ways avoid contracting it, I began to think: Where are our priorities?  Are they on the temporal or the eternal?  Sadly, I think they are on the temporal.

I am in no way implying that the H1N1 pandemic is something we should not have some concern about.  I am also not implying that there aren’t legitimate things that we need to have care about in this world.  What I am asking is this: If we are as concerned about an odd seasonal virus making us ill and uncomfortable, how much more ought we be concerned with the eternal state of our souls?

The flu usually brings us 7-10 days of what we call misery- headache, chills, fever, lethargy, sneezing, runny nose, dizziness and coughing.  It causes us to miss work, church, and family gatherings.  We don’t rest well and are in ill-moods (no pun intended.)

After we leave this world we have an infinite eternity to spend someplace; the Bible says that will be either Heaven or hell.  Eternity, I can’t even express how long that is, let alone begin to compare it with our 7-10 days of misery while enduring the flu.  And of we look at what the Bible calls the misery of hell, well, we have dramatically over-stated our experience with the flu!  Can you even imagine the pain and real misery of tens of thousands of years of going through what Jesus described in the story, not parable, of the rich man?  I can not

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Just think about it, if the collective ‘we’ are so concerned with the physical illness, should we not also be much more concerned with our spiritual wellness?  In Jesus’ words, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Mat. 16:26