Lessons from the Dental Chair

I'm like a kid when it comes to winter weather. They are predicting a sleet / snow event for our area beginning tonight and through tomorrow. I hope I'm not disappointed. I think I enjoy it so much because it forces us to step out of our routines. People seem less frantic. And of course, the scenery is often breath-taking. So, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow (but we could do without the freezing rain and sleet).

Yesterday morning, I spent a couple of hours in a dentist's chair. I don't know what it is about my teeth, but I always seem to have to spend about twice as much time as the dentist has allotted. I had a crack in one of my molars, so he was preparing it for a crown. Right now, I have a temporary one. Boy, I could try to make a spiritual application there, couldn't I? Being prepared for a crown.

But here is the application I was thinking of yesterday in that chair. I am grateful to live in a day when broken-down, diseased body parts can be repaired or replaced. I sat there wondering what someone who lived several hundred years ago would have done in my situation. No doubt, that tooth would have absessed and become a serious health problem at some point.

Then I got to thinking about my heart (spiritually). I have been praying for about a year -- more fervently than ever -- that God would examine all those hidden places in my heart. I have prayed that He, like a surgeon, would just cut out all the junk and disease. Anything that does not resemble Him I want cut out! I want to be a Jesus-clone. I want to be possessed by the Holy Spirit. Oh, how I want that! And I have so far to go. But the joy is in the journey. And that I am discovering more and more each day.