Barfing Preaches

Hello again!

Christmas in general is craziness around here (just like everywhere else.) Add into that sickness among all of us and..BLEH.  

I didn't drink coffee for four days.  That's how bad.  

But as I sit here, I'm sporting my 20 oz coffee mug and life is good again.  

Being sick does something really important.  It gives me a big-fat-dose of perspective.  It's like God's reminder to me of how weak I really am.  And how little I really do on my own.  Take my health away and I have little to offer as far as accomplishments.  Nothing actually.  

And this bout of sickness taught me something new.  Barfing preaches.  I got sick very late on Christmas night.  I'll spare you the details, sorta, but it was not nice.  I felt gross all night, and then in the morning the barfing finally came.

*and this is a side-note, but DUDE how does that stuff stay in your stomach for so long?!  I hadn't eaten for a good 15 hours and when the barfing started I thought, "Oh good, I haven't eaten much so I don't have very much to throw up" but NO. I was wrong* 

I feel like we need to talk about barfing for a sec.  There's different kinds of barfing.  The kind where you barf fairly soon after you eat and it's super gross because it's mushed up food and you never wanna eat that food again for as long as you live.  But then two days go by and you find yourself eating pizza again.  And then there is the acid-barfing.  Where you haven't eaten for a long time but your stomach is full of acid and bile and other grossness and when you barf that.  Ouch.  It burns like none other and leaves your throat super sore.

So, I had the acid-barfing.  *shudder*  Aren't you glad you stopped by today?  A few hours afterwards, I was super thirsty, but dreaded the thought of drinking anything.  I grabbed a bottled water out of the fridge, twisted the cap off and took a tiny sip.

It was the worst tasting water ever.  

Of course it wasn't really the water that was the problem.  It was perfectly fine and the same water that I always drink and have no problem with.  If my family were to grab a bottle, and give it a swig, they would think it was great.

The water tasted bad because of my circumstances.  My experience.  It tasted bad because of a very real event:  Acid barfing.  

And then it hit me.  A very real truth that sometimes the Gospel, Jesus...tastes very bad to people.  Believers and unbelievers alike.  Sometimes life circumstances or beliefs or whatever distort what really is.  

The water I was tasting was the same water as usual, its taste hadn't changed literally, but my taste for it had.  Someone could have argued with me about the taste of the water, but would that have changed how it tasted to me?  

Absolutely not.

Sometimes, we have to figure out what's distorting our taste.  Sometimes, we need to love people and give them some time to heal from the acid-barfing of their life so they can taste again.


Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Psalm 34:8

Because barfing preaches.

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