Getting restless

Rhona Cathcart March 22, 2022 0 2

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1 Corinthians 10: 1-5 (NRSVA)

1 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.

About thirteen or fourteen years ago I went through a phase of being severely anaemic. I had gone to the doctor as I felt I was maybe ‘a bit run down’ and was looking rather pale. I wasn’t prepared to get a phone call from him a couple of days later to tell me I was to go pick up iron tablets IMMEDIATELY and that he was signing me off work for four weeks. When I told a nurse friend my results she said that my haemoglobin levels where apparently only just above hospitalisation level. The odd thing, for a part-time hypochondriac like myself, was that I didn’t get particularly stressed about it. I was fortunate that my type of iron deficiency anaemia responded well to the supplements. But even before I knew that, I remained surprisingly calm, even when the doctor mentioned the investigations they planned to do to ensure the low iron wasn’t caused by an internal bleed.

Afterwards, when I was back to my usual “don’t read the medical leaflet because you will decide you have all the symptoms” self, I speculated that I hadn’t been anxious because my low-haemoglobin blood wasn’t giving me enough energy for anxiety! In that way, it was a kind of restful short-term illness. But that very restfulness could have been damaging, if it had caused me to ignore the need to take action. Sometimes our spiritual restlessness serves the same purpose, making sure that we spend some time in the wilderness, and don’t get too complacent about God’s provision, or too lazy in our response to his call.

PRAYER:

Lord

How I love it when my life feels stable,

When the things I enjoy are plentiful

When the people I love are happy and content,

When stresses are minimal and the troubles of the world pass me by.

But they’re not supposed to pass me by, are they?

Forgive me, for the times I allow my own security or comfort

to blind me to the uncertainty and discomfort around me.

It’s so easy for comfort to become complacency,

For security to become selfishness

Remind me, when I’m too comfortable,

to throw myself off balance,

to rediscover my passion,

to step into the unknown,

to follow you into the wilderness.

Amen