We don’t often think of being sick as an act of grace. Whatever we may call it, praise God for building into our bodies a system of getting rid of unclean things that have gone into us. Be it the normal everyday way we do that or when our stomach needs to grind into reverse gear. But what about the things that make not our stomach sick, but our heart sick? What about the things that fatally contaminate our hearts, minds and souls, and separate us from eternal life? How do we get rid of those things? Stomach sickness seems worse than heart sickness because we immediately feel it. But unlike heart sickness can we get rid of stomach sickness quickly; sickness of our soul is harder to perceive. We often don’t feel it until we have hurt others, hurt God, or slowly destroyed ourselves over a lifetime until we reach the final day of judgement. Jesus says it’s time to talk openly about what is making us really sick, and the diagnosis isn’t good.
