I had a freak incident happen in the shower last Thursday. I accidently knocked my razor off the hook where it hangs. It did a flip and then a very lovely swan-like dive and landed on my little toe. First it made a cut, then it “shaved” off a large section. It really bled and didn’t seem to want to stop. I finally got a pressure bandage on it, taped it to my other toes, stuck it in a shoe and headed off to work. Walking wasn’t easy. It was still bleeding lightly when I replaced the bandage that night.
Friday morning, I was a bit wiser and while I still had to wear a shoe to and from work, I brought a pair of soft ballerina slippers to wear at work. I could walk a little easier. I had errands to do after work, however, and the shoe had to stay on for a while. That toe does not like a shoe. As of today, it still does not like a shoe. It reminds me how much it doesn’t like a shoe every time I put one on. It is still recovering from its wounding, and still causing me to limp whenever I put it into a shoe. I walk a little like Chester did following Marshall Dillion around on Gunsmoke.
The crazy part is that once the shoe is off, I find myself still limping even though the pain is gone. After a few minutes of hobbling, I catch myself and must consciously determine to walk normally without a limp. My body has trained itself while in the shoe to accommodate for the pain – so much so that even when the pain isn’t there, I am still limping.
I thought about how our hearts, what we might call our minds, wills, emotions, also makes accommodations for the pain of life. Even when that pain is removed, we are still “limping” through life until we make that conscious effort to stop. Paul wrote about making that effort to the Philippians, “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind ….” [3:13]
One thing I do, I forget. That requires effort. Pain, even past ones, leaves us wounded, and trains us to protect ourselves. So, we must determine to not let pain from the past rule our present and determine our future. Paul tells us what else to do … tomorrow.
