Ignore It or Fix it

I guess you can say that I am still somewhat in recovery mode. I had a bit of surgery at the end of September and I’m still getting over it a bit.  I had sinus surgery.  I’ve had a few more sinus attacks and head colds in recent years, and breathing through my nose has become increasingly more difficult. So, I finally made the decision to have it done.

            Upon examining me and reading the scan, the doctor asked me a question. “So, did you play basketball or hockey?” He was saying that things were a little crooked up there.  What’s funny is that I have been popped in the nose by elbows plenty of times over the years, but I was never actually diagnosed with a broken nose. So, I had never had any type of treatment to fix it.

            A lot of things in life are like that.  There is a problem, but we have not addressed it. We seem to think that if we just ignore what is going on it will finally go away. We do that with breaks in relationships. We do that with difficulties on the job. It seems that the most frequent place we do so is in our family life.

            Jesus told us to deal with such issues. On one occasion He said (this is the Brad paraphrase), “If you have a problem with a brother, and you find yourself at church, stop pretending to worship, go to your brother, and make amends.”

Sounds pretty simple. But in many ways it’s harder than hard. First, it’s hard to admit that we are the problem. Second, we aren’t sure how the other person will respond to us. And so, too often we simply pretend that nothing is wrong, and go on living a lie.

            My sinus problems weren’t going away. I’ve been dealing with them for decades.  I needed to let the doctor fix the issue. And we need to let the Lord work in our lives to fix the issues that divide us and tear us apart. I pray that you will do that today. And I pray that the Lord will go before you to make that happen.