Hanging In There with Chronic Heart Disease
Our hearts do lots of pumping throughout our lives, roughly 100,000 beats a day, and possibly 2.8 billion beats or more in a lifetime. Given the effects of cheeseburgers and fries, the heart does a lot of hard work.
Confession – of pride and unwillingness to bug my parents for money: I held a paying job throughout college, but sometimes my accounting was not good, and so I might be looking at a shortfall in rent. So I would go down to the Plasma Alliance, just off campus on High Street. Plasma donors were typically not professors or bank executives. Donors had to answer some basic questions before giving plasma, including health questions about frequency of drinking, extramarital sex, use of illicit drugs, and general questions about diet. As I recall, they paid me 25 bucks for my plasma. And, yes, I did feel a little like I was selling my body.
As I looked at a bedraggled 50 – 60-year-old male, largely unshaven, who had a certain “earthy aroma” to him, I wondered how he answered those questions. As a very late teen or early twentysomething (OK… I went to the Plasma Alliance more than once), I thought I was in pretty good health. On one of those visits, the lab tech came over to me holding a vial of my blood and said with the volume set pretty high, “What did you have for lunch? A cheeseburger?” This was before HIPAA rules, so I could not immediately sue him and pay for my new Corvette. He showed me the blood, and ,yes, a lot of fat was floating around in it. I may have had a cheeseburger. I might’ve missed that on the questionnaire. L
My smug condescending attitude toward the guy next to me who I thought smelled a bit of alcohol, faded away as I realized I had my own problems.
After the flood, Noah offered up a sacrifice of thanks to God for preserving his family. Genesis 8:21 records it this way: “The Lord smelled the soothing aroma; and the Lord said to Himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I’ve done.’”
Mankind had chronic heart disease. Even after a worldwide reboot, bad programming still infected the earthly app. The description of man in Genesis 8 after the flood doesn’t sound very much different from man in Genesis 6:5 before the flood. Judgment did not fix the root problem. The only fix would be mercy and grace.
The fact that God continued to put up with Noah the drunk (Genesis 9:21) and his scoffing children and scheming great-grandchildren is a testament to God’s mercy. Things are certainly not right with the world. Wars, rumors of wars, pandemics are reminders of that. But the fact that you and I are alive today is also a reminder of God’s patience and hope and mercy in Genesis and at the Plasma Alliance. God let us live even though He knew that “the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
God has been enduring a lot of bad hearts for a long time! Next time you have a cheeseburger, remember how patient God has been with you, (and me!).
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, You have provided salvation from judgment. We thank You for Your mercy and patience with us as we continue to have evil intent in our heart. May our time remaining be spent living faithfully before You, being good stewards of all we manage for You, and sharing Christ Who is our Ark to eternity, through His sacrifice which is our soothing aroma to You. In His name we pray. Amen.