She’s leaking CK. Technically speaking, the muscle breaks down leaking high levels of creatine kinase (CK) into the bloodstream. By now, many of you are aware that our daughter Lydia has been battling Rhabdomyolysis (RAB-DOE-MY-O-LIE-SIS) for over a week. Rhabdo is most often the product of extreme exercise. One way to think of the symptoms is that she feels she ran an ultra-marathon in intense heat. The most immediate danger has been to her kidneys, which have thankfully have been able to keep up and are showing no damage.
This is Lydia’s second bout with Rhabdo. Since it is recurrent, it has become necessary to dig beneath the symptoms associated with Rhabdo and seek for its cause (which in Lydia’s case is not extreme exercise). Don’t get me wrong. We are dealing with the pain and fatigue associated with Rhabdo, but we now know there is something beneath the Rhabdo that needs to be uncovered if to truly deal with this problem in Lydia’s life.
In a similar way, we leak toxins in our experience of the Gospel, leading to various debilitating effects. In the Gospel, we are invited to a life of love, joy, and peace. But when we leak toxins, we debilitate the way we treat our family, effect our attitude towards the world’s politics, and torpedo our contentedness with our finances. Our Gospel muscle breaks down, but what is the cause? It looks like Lydia has a metabolic myopathy that is underlying her Rhabdo. For us as Christians, it is a myopathy known as unbelief.
In this season of Lent, as we make our final approach to Good Friday, let us remember that God has purposed in his being to do his people good (Zechariah 8:15). Let us experience afresh the love that has been lavished on us in Christ (Ephesians 1:7-9, I John 3:1). May our belief in these Gospel truths be the source of nourishment that drives away the toxins of unbelief and gives us the strength we need to truly experience love, joy and peace of the Gospel.
This is Lydia’s second bout with Rhabdo. Since it is recurrent, it has become necessary to dig beneath the symptoms associated with Rhabdo and seek for its cause (which in Lydia’s case is not extreme exercise). Don’t get me wrong. We are dealing with the pain and fatigue associated with Rhabdo, but we now know there is something beneath the Rhabdo that needs to be uncovered if to truly deal with this problem in Lydia’s life.
In a similar way, we leak toxins in our experience of the Gospel, leading to various debilitating effects. In the Gospel, we are invited to a life of love, joy, and peace. But when we leak toxins, we debilitate the way we treat our family, effect our attitude towards the world’s politics, and torpedo our contentedness with our finances. Our Gospel muscle breaks down, but what is the cause? It looks like Lydia has a metabolic myopathy that is underlying her Rhabdo. For us as Christians, it is a myopathy known as unbelief.
In this season of Lent, as we make our final approach to Good Friday, let us remember that God has purposed in his being to do his people good (Zechariah 8:15). Let us experience afresh the love that has been lavished on us in Christ (Ephesians 1:7-9, I John 3:1). May our belief in these Gospel truths be the source of nourishment that drives away the toxins of unbelief and gives us the strength we need to truly experience love, joy and peace of the Gospel.
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