Hello,
It is tic season
in Western Pennsylvania!
Yesterday, I took
my dog, Duncan, for a walk around our property, and when we got back home he
sat down next to me on the couch. As I
reached over to pet him, I felt a little speck-like thing in his hair by his
ears. I latched onto it with my
fingernails and pulled it off of him. A
tic! But that was just the beginning of
our tic harvest. Over the course of the
next couple of hours we continued to find tics.
The final count was over 50!
Growing up in the
suburbs of Chicago, I never experienced the tyranny of tics. But here, they are all over the place. They are pesky things. They can be smaller than your eye can see,
but most often they are big enough that if you look carefully you can spot
them. Some are black. Some are black and red. But they all have one purpose in life: to
suck your blood.
They crawl up
your legs in search of a nice place to drill their head into your skin, and
once attached they start to suction your blood into their ever-swelling
bodies. If you don’t get to them when
they start, they can balloon themselves up into the size of a kidney bean. Their drilling is an abrasive attack, and so
your body responds with itching. Some of
them can make you really sick, lymes disease, but mostly they are just a real
pain in the …..well…. wherever they attach.
Seems to me that
as we walk through the field of life we more often find ourselves dealing with attack
of tics. Every once in a while we run into a large preditor, a tragedy that
knocks us down and tries to tear us apart.
More often though we find ourselves the target of tics: anger that leads
us to say biting things, mistakes that put us on the defense and produce white
lies, thoughts that demean or create jealousy. The fields of life are full of tics that have
a way of latching onto us and gorge themselves on our blood.
The sooner you
deal with the real tics that creep and crawl on you, the less damage they
do. It is the same way with the tics
that latch onto us from the fields of life.
The sooner you deal with them, the less damage they do. With either kind of tic, real or metaphorical,
if they are left alone they can really become an expanding problem, and some of
them can make you really sick.
That is why one
of the main disciplines of the Christian faith is confession. In my church we begin every worship service
with corporate confession and forgiveness.
When we gather in the light of Jesus’ love and mercy, we can see those
little creepy, crawly things that aren’t as visible in the dim light of the
world, and with gentle but precise hands
of grace, Jesus plucks those blood sucking, joy sapping, life irritating, peace
aggravating, and potentially hope threatening tics from our lives. Once plucked from our lives, we can worry
about bigger things: the starvation that is attacking our neighbors, the
violence that is shattering our world, the confusion that is spinning people
around in nausea, the tragedies that obliterate the light.
So, if you feel
little creepy, crawly things in your life, let me invite you to come to church
where in the light of Jesus’ forgiveness those tics can’t hide. Let me invite you to come and have them
plucked from your life before they drill themselves and embed themselves in
your life. Let me invite you to come and take care of those tics so that you
can care about what is really important in life.
Come….come every
week….and find out what a great feeling it is to be tic-free!
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace,(ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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