It is one of the most helpless feelings you have as a parent. You are holding your young child and they are gasping for their next breath.
This was the reality for us as a family this week as our youngest son, Bo, came down with RSV, a respiratory virus. We watched him quickly regress to the point that he was laboring for every breath.
My wife had taken him to the doctor prior to this point and they prescribed a nebulizer as well as an antibiotic. He was about 12 hours into the treatment when things seem to be really heading south.
As I watched my wife care for and comfort him I realized afresh that sin’s curse is not only real but relentless. He is a little 9 month old baby gasping for his next breath. How impartial, vicious and far reaching is sin? This type of scene reminds me of man at his worst, abiding under sin’s curse.
A short time later we were on the phone with the doctor and we were given thorough, thoughtful counsel regarding Bo. They asked several questions and then provided direction. Their care was felt through the phone. In the midst of the call they told us that the antibiotic should begin to make a major impact within the next couple of hours. This combined with the nebulizer should bring a turnaround. My wife and I looked at each other and marveled that medical professionals have this things so wired that they can literally call the improvement time. Here is humanity serving well as ambitious, thoughtful, innovative image bearers. The common grace of God through these image bearers is, from a human perspective, the means by which Bo is recovering. This is natural man doing his best.
At the same time a group of my close friends and leaders were meeting for our weekly prayer meeting at the church. There they pray for the needs of Emmaus and our city. At the same time that Bo was beginning to recover they were storming the throne of grace for him to improve. God heard their prayers and has brought some relief. This is a redeemed man doing his best.
I bring these three together as an example of the intersection of the practical and the theological. We live in a world that is governed by God and our right understanding of it has everything to do with our understanding of him.
My wife and I praise God for how he uses brothers and sisters to pray for one another, medical professionals to help one another, and most of all our Savior, the Lord Christ, who became a curse for us (Gal. 3.13). We long to reach those stormy banks of Jordan, where, “No chilling winds or poisonous breath can reach that healthful shore; sickness and sorrow, pain and death,are felt and feared no more.”
Please pray for Bo if you would. He is improving but is still not where he needs to be.
