Shingles!

Oh the Pain!

As I live longer upon this earth I experience more of the things it has to offer. That is not necessarily a good thing as I’ve discovered this week experiencing an onslaught of viruses that cause shingles. For most of my life shingles meant something to put on roofs and even after I learned it was a disease that people can suffer with, I never really thought of it as connected to me. My how things have changed this week.

Shingles is caused by the virus that causes chickenpox, but only in older people who have had chickenpox. It stays latent in the body until a compromise in the immune system allows it to thrive. When that happens the victim will experience a period of sensitive and hurting skin somewhere on the torso that can’t be explained. A little over a week into this sensitive, hurting skin a terrible red rash of blisters will break out in a line usually about three or four inches in width that will go from the middle of the back to the middle of the front. The pain is at a high level and there is no way to get comfortable or have relief. That’s where I am as I write. I’m told that the blisters will last 3 or 4 days and then dry out and be replaced by crusty scabs which may last more than a month.

I am a person who is way more over on the side of appreciating the beauty of the earth that God has given us. I am enraptured by the beauty of mountains, waterfalls, beaches, flowers, birds, etc. His creation is so amazing as to be inexplicable. I have written an article about it that you should read if you haven’t. It’s called “God DIdn’t Have To” and it’s the 6/3/2024 article on the website, tryingtowalk.com.

But I’m not so strongly convicted on things like mosquitos, bed bugs, and the shingles virus. Why, when God made this glorious universe with His almighty power, did he put these negative influences which detract from its goodness here? It’s one of those many things He didn’t tell us, which to me indicates He thinks we don’t need to know. (And, of course, what He thinks is right.)

One could say that in a generic sense He did tell us. When God finished His creation in the first couple chapters of Genesis, He saw that everything was good, except that man was alone, so he created woman for man. (No, I am not about to say that is when all the problems began.) So at the point of Eve’s creation, indeed, everything was good.

But then Adam and Eve, through the temptation of the serpent brought sin, that which was not good, into the world. At that point God changed things for them. It seems that whereas everything had been good, now there were going to be other circumstances with which they must deal. God cursed Eve with a difficult process of childbearing.

Then He said the following to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you will return.”

What follows is nothing more than me thinking/wondering out loud, well, on the keyboard. But God definitely acted with the intent of making the life of people on this earth less serene and more severe than it was before they were expelled from the garden. Perhaps at that time we were also cursed with flies and mosquitos and viruses and any number of “bad” things with which we would never have to contend had we (Adam and Eve were only representative of us - had it been us, the result would have been the same) not given in to the devil’s temptation. But now we have pestilence and peril and discomfort as part of our lives.

God didn’t spell it out precisely so we don’t know. We can only guess. But I see these evil things as being a necessity for keeping our minds right and seeking God’s way. Without these “downers” some may unwisely be so enraptured by the creation that they would preferr it over the creator. In other words, our lives on this earth are so blessed, and the beauty is so great, that going to live with God loses some of its appeal for some folks. Maybe, He did it to keep us from being proud in our own conceits.

So God blessed us with bad insects and poisonous snakes, and diseases that we will want to keep away from. We know that those things are an integral part of life on earth. They won’t exist in Heaven where we can live with God. Dealing with them keeps our focus in the proper perspective.

Just my thoughts. You can give yours in the comments. Now, I’ve got to get back in bed (but it won’t be comfortable.)