I realize every once in awhile now that I really pretty much walk around in pain nowadays. Maybe even 24-7... who knows?! You know, it must be that I've built up a tolerance for pain, but it used to be I would notice when my head was hurting or my neck was cramped up. Now I only notice those things when I've had an extremely stressful day or my allergies act up majorly. I'm just walking around with my neck stiff, & my back aching some - and the sad thing is that I'm not even sure where it began or where it came from.

I'm sure it began little - possibly even almost unnoticeable. Probably began hurting slightly more as the days went by until I reach the point I am at today - walking around in pain that I don't even notice. Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not hurting that bad. If I was I would be noticing it all the time. It's that dull pain - that 'my head hurts a little/I can feel the pressure on the back of my neck' kind of pain. It makes me wonder, though, what it was like before I had the pain. What did it feel like? I really can't remember.

Not to try & over-spiritualize things (I'm just typing what is popping into my head), but I think that is exactly what happens in our spiritual lives as well. It's not the 'bad pains' that trip us up spiritually. We know when we've tripped over something & fallen flat on our face. We have enough sense (at least most of us do) to pick ourselves up & watch where we are walking. It's the slight bumps, the small things that get us into the biggest trouble, I'm afraid.

We take that small step in the wrong direction and pretty soon we're lost in la-la land - far from the path that God had set us on & many times even opposite the direction he nudged us to walk in.

That reminds me of something I read this morning as I've been preparing for our discussion time this Sunday on Communal Faith (the series we're going through with the young adults group right now). The author was recounting a question posed to him from a friend, "What if I knew that for every bowl of ice cream I enjoyed I would lose one percent of my vision?" What would you do? It doesn't matter if you have a weakness for ice cream - no one would seriously make such a stupid & detrimental decision would they? Read on to what he has to say:

I suspect after awhile I would wonder if it were really true - does ice cream really cause me to lose vision, or did someone make that up to keep me form getting fat? Eventually I would try it out. I would eat some ice cream and then look at some words to see if they were blurry. I'm guessing I would see just fine - one percent wouldn't make that much difference. But just to be safe, I would only have ice cream once a month. After a year of ice cream that amounted to a twelve percent loss in vision, I think I would notice a difference. In a blurry street sign, I would see some consequences of my indulgence. The eye doctor would change my prescription, and I would have to get new glasses. And then I would see clearly again. In seeing clearly again I wonder if I would be tempted to eat just a little ice cream, since the consequences appear manageable. In fact, eating just a little ice cream would still leave me many years before losing my eyesight completely. Stronger prescriptions, laser eye surgery. I'm adaptable; I think I could still make life work.

Sometimes I wonder if little acts of sin smudge the window of my soul. I confess, ask for God's cleansing and all, but while I'm confident of restored fellowship with God, I wonder if I've lost something I can't fully recover.

Something to think about...