Cystic Fibrosis, Pollen, & Sin

If you are reading this and live in the San Antonio area, I'm sure you are like me…nose dripping, headache, congestion in the chest, etc. Yep, it's allergy season again. I am actually looking up the record  is for tissue usage in a 30-minute time period. I should at least have honorable mention! But enough about my allergies. Let's change the subject to my son and his Cystic Fibrosis appointment today.

Josiah had a CF appointment Tuesday. This means that we packed him up, went to Santa Rosa Hospital, and the doctors run about 5 hours worth of tests and ask tons of questions (sorry, I don't keep record how many times he poops in a day?!). I was actually looking forward to this particular clinic visit, though, because Josiah is dealing with a lot of phlegm in his chest and nose. For you and me, we can simply hack, hack, and hack some more which will cause the crud to exit our bodies. For Josiah and other CF patients, it's not that easy. Imagine always having that in your lungs. Imagine always having a stuffed nose! We do breathing treatments, various meds, and tons of exercise to attempt to keep the phlegm as loose as possible. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Now I am not a scientist or a doctor so I can't give you all the technical reasons behind why Josiah can't get this crud out of his lungs. I do know that it if it doesn't come out, it makes it hard to breathe and bacteria forms (bad, bad, bad!). This makes me think of our life and sin. Some sin we can look at and get fixed pretty quick (example: drunk driving is bad…so don't drink and drive). Other sin isn't quite as simple as just knowing that it's bad and stopping it. An example of this would be addiction. There are tons of TV shows that focus on people trying hard to get rid of their addictions, but like Josiah trying to get rid of his phlegm from his chest, they simply can't do it alone.

An example of this is found in John 8:1-11. The woman needed Jesus help to not only save her physical life but to offer healing inwardly. Okay, so maybe you are thinking, "That's great…but I'm dealing with _______ (fill in the blank) and God would never forgive me for that." Check out Colossians 1:14. Forgiveness from Jesus applies to everything; there aren't any "if's" or "what if's."

So while I'm taking Josiah to the CF clinic today to get the phlegm out physically, maybe we should all get our spiritual phlegm cleaned out as well.