A Bitter Pill


Matthew 20:22

But Jesus answered by saying to them, "You don't know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering I am about to drink?" "Oh yes," they replied, "we are able!"

I tried to write this blog last night and quit. It just wasn't happening. It is hard to write about adversity without falling into moroseness or even worse cliche. I truly want bierkergaard to be a place of hope. Real hope. In a sometimes hard, heartless, and hopeless world. Buoyed by a two hour snow delay this morn, I shall try to ascend the adversity mountain again.

With my recent ruptured appendix, the surgeon placed me on some lethal antibiotic called Metronidazole. Also known by its brand name Flagyl. Wonder if it is from the same root word for flagellate? Would seem logical. My general practitioner doctor just shook his head and said "it is nasty" when I brought up how it was seemingly poisoning me.

We all know the saying, "Had to swallow a bitter pill." I now grasp this idiomatic expression more experientially than ever as this Flagyl was so bitter to taste that I have been literally chewing Wrigley's Doublemint gum 24-7 even as I sleep. I felt like I have been sucking on a radioactive Lifesaver. My mouth felt like the grave. Death.

Flagyl apparently kills all bacteria, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It does a dirty job that many antibiotics can't...even killing dangerous anaerobic bacteria that doesn't need oxygen to survive.  Flagyl takes out the enemy as well as non-combatants causing a great deal of collateral damage. Not unlike our drone attacks in Pakistan.

I gleefully took the last Flagyl pill Monday morning but I still taste it in me. It has a half-life as uranium. I was a good patient in following the surgeon's orders with the meds and everything else. When I was young, I would often skirt Dr.'s advice in order to try to get back to normal before ready. Now, I submit myself to their authority.

Spiritually, God employs bitter events to penetrate into our souls, to kill our proclivities of self-sufficiency and pride. Yes, it is a bitter pill and hard medicine. But blessing often only feeds our compacency. Adversity cuts squarely across the tendency to cruise in comfort and wakes us up. Every Flagyl I took, I was conscious of. My awareness was heightened, the adversity scale was cranked up. I knew why I was taking it: The bitterness was making me better. So, I swallowed it down and carried on.

The world offers many solutions, but a sufficient explanation to suffering is not one of them. All questions lead to the Cross. God has ordained that our deepest and hardest questions leads to the deepest and hardest solution imaginable. The death of the God/Man, who embraced suffering and redeemed it, by his innocent blood. He downed the most bitter pill (God's wrath), and was broken, to heal us and make us whole. Amen.
   

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