Hello,
Saturday night as I was getting ready for bed, I caught a glimpse of
myself in the mirror, and I noticed a small black dot resting on the side of my
Adam’s apple. I tried to flick it
off, but it didn’t budge. I gave
it a couple of good scratches, and still it did not move. I leaned closer to the mirror, and
under closer examination, it looked as though it might be a lone black hair in
my otherwise gray stubble beard.
But it didn’t feel like a hair.
Too crunchy. Little hair
like follicles seemed to be emanating from it….and that is when I realized that
it was a tick. It had buried its
head into my skin, and what I was seeing was it’s body and legs protruding
out. Apparently it had not been
there long, as it was still quite small, and it didn’t take much of a yank to
pull it out. I think I got it just
moments before when I put my head on my dog, Duncan, using him as a pillow.
They say that the ticks are going to be bad this fall, so I wasn’t
surprised to find one embedding itself on my neck. Ticks, as you know, live by sucking the blood from their
unsuspecting host, ala Dracula of legendary vampire fame. This particular tick that hoped to
feast on my blood seemed to have been emulating the legendary Count by virtue
of its choice of blood-drawing location.
Maybe the tick was engaging in an early Halloween stunt.
As I said, once I realized what I was dealing with, it didn’t take much
effort to free myself from this blood drawing tick, and in plenty of time
before it could do me much damage.
Unfortunately, this tiny tick is not the only pest that seeks to live by
sucking my blood, and thereby my life, from me. Far more hungry and damaging are the things that I have done
that have brought pain to me and others, the pressures of work and life that
clamp down on me daily, the failings and failures that won’t let go of me. Unlike that little tick seeking my
blood, these things that seek my life-blood can dig themselves so deeply into
me that they attach themselves to my heart with vice-like fangs, drawing the
life right out of me.
But Sunday morning an amazing thing happened. I walked into church, as I do every Sunday morning, and
someone saw the trouble I was facing.
Someone saw the blood sucking, life sucking parasites that had leeched
onto my life. Someone saw the
waning strength, the darkening hope, and my labored steps. And that someone said to me, “Take and
drink. This is my blood shed for
you.”, and as I found myself kneeling at the altar, drinking in a sip of wine
carrying the promised presence of Christ’s blood, something new took a hold of
me and my heart: a transfusion of God grace and mercy. In a world that had sought to bring me
to my knees by sucking the life-blood right out of me, I found myself being
lifted from my knees by one who gave his life for me. Carrying a poison of divine forgiveness, this transfusion of
Christ’s blood brought a deathblow to all those parasites that had come to the
altar clinging to my heart, and a shot in the arm of courage and strength.
Forecasters seem to be right.
This is going to be a severe tick season….little black ones and big
invisible ones. But thank God,
there is one whose eyes sees those ticks, and when he, Jesus, sees them they
don’t stand a chance, and we stand with more than a chance….we stand with the
power and life of his blood.
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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