A week after my concussion (bonked my head on the ice at public skating Dec 22) I had to go back up to ER because of severe pain in one of my teeth. When I got in to see my dentist after Christmas break, he discovered a tooth was cracked all the way down the middle. I got it removed yesterday.
In the instructions for recovery, a familiar warning was included. There is something called “dry socket” (sounds painful just to say it) that results when the clot is dislodged from covering the wound. I have heard of this numerous times. In fact, I was waiting in a dentist office years ago and overheard the receptionist talking to someone who was obviously frantic because they had dry socket and she had nothing she could tell them to make it better.
Why this update on how I’m doing? Because I keep hearing people say that the Bible’s talk about God’s judgment against sin is just a bunch of scare-tactics or fearmongering. But when I hear about dry socket, something I have never personally witnessed, it scares the heebie-jeebies out of me enough that I want to follow the instructions to the T, as they say.
In the same way that the goal of the instructions is the ultimate healing of the extraction wound, and the warning about dry socket is just a fact of life we need to know about to help us do the right things for healing, the goal of the Bible is to lead people to know the God who created us so we can return to him. It’s just that there’s a lot working against us in that department and the wide road that most people prefer just happens to lead to destruction.
So, while age and life continue to take their toll, and the headlines even just of the Coquihalla Highway around Merritt this week have been full of bad (and even deadly) news, warning people to have proper snow tires, carry chains, have an emergency bag in the car, and drive to conditions, are not scare-tactics or fearmongering (just ask someone who has seen the devastation on icy and snowy roads), and neither is it a scare-tactic to tell people about the end of the road that leads anyone away from the only true God.
The fact is that the Creator created us to be like him. We preferred being like his arch enemy the devil, the one responsible for all the suffering, death, and war in the world. God sent his Son to provide salvation from sin. Most people still don’t want God’s love while the world’s love for the devil seems to be growing exponentially.
But telling people that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” or that “the wages of sin is death,” or that the wide road leads to “destruction”, is not scare-tactics or fearmongering. It’s just as much just telling the truth as everything I have heard about the warnings for dry-socket and dangerous road conditions.
So, as I eat my very soft bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, I trust that this will save me the horrible discomfort of that dreaded condition of dry-socket, I thank God that I will soon be well enough to get back on the ice (while appreciating the necessity of wearing a helmet from now on), and I thank the Creator for Jesus Christ his Son who has guaranteed my eternal life with no threat of condemnation or destruction.
Thank you, our
Father in heaven!
© 2024
Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English
Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition:
2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News
Publishers.)
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