Should You Stifle Your Sneeze?

Ann Althouse, who is soon to have cataract surgery, has been looking for ways to avoid sneezing. She's been advised that sneezing while recovering from the procedure is not good. It appears she may have found one method for avoiding sneezes in this Youtube video.



My brother-in-law might want to see this video. Last week, during a visit, he sneezed. I thought nothing of it, but he said, "Excuse me."

Then he told me, "I hate to sneeze." I'd never thought about sneezing as something one either hates or loves, just something that your body does.

But I can understand why, after cataract surgery, sneezing isn't a good idea.

So, does this anti-sneeze technique work?

After reading Althouse's post, I felt a sneeze coming on. (Maybe because I had sneezing on my mind..) So I tried the little technique recommended here and, I didn't sneeze.

It didn't, though, prevent what always happens to me after a sneeze: the need to blow my nose.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, it's usually not a good idea to suppress our sneezes:

The next time you get the urge to stifle a window-rattling sneeze, you might want to reconsider. It could be harmful to your health.

Clamping your nostrils and mouth shut might avoid disturbing others. But it could damage your eardrums or sinuses or cause an ear infection.

Sneezes are surprisingly forceful. The sudden, powerful expulsion of air can propel mucous droplets at rates of up to 100 miles per hour... 

Some people sneeze because of colds. Colds may produce a yellowish nasal discharge that signals an infection.

It’s best for that discharge to move out of the body. Stifling a sneeze only keeps it in the body — and could move it further inside.

“By stifling a sneeze, you could push infected mucus through the eustachian tube and back into the middle ear,” Dr. Szekely says. “You can get middle ear infections because of that.”

Sneezing is a protective reflex. It means an irritant has gotten into your nose that your body wants to keep from getting to your sinuses or lungs. When you sneeze, your body is trying to rid itself of the intruder.

Often, I tell people after they've sneezed, "Gesundheit [German for Health]" or "God bless you." Doing so is probably rooted in a cultural idea that sneezes are bad.

But, in fact, they're meant to protect us from the bad, the body's way of getting rid of an intruder. So, the folks at the Cleveland Clinic say, when you feel a sneeze coming on, just cover your mouth and nose and let it rip. (Unless you're recovering from cataract surgery or wanting to avoid sneezing on someone while giving them a massage, I suppose.)

Gloria Copeland, put a lid on it!

In late January, it was Gloria Copeland’s husband Kenneth defending his private jet and materialistic lifestyle based on his heretical prosperity gospel.

This week she spouts nonsense about flu shots. She says that instead of getting flu shots, believers should inoculate themselves with the Word of God.

I believe in the power of God's Word. I believe Saint Paul's words to Timothy: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

God's Word calls me to faith in Christ and into life in God's kingdom. It does not call me into a superstition that ignores the advances in medicine God allows diligent researchers to uncover.

Copeland should be reminded of the time when the devil tempted Jesus to jump off the temple pinnacle on the bases of God’s promise to send angels to minister to His people. The devil cited Psalm 91 as his proof text:

"...he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone."

Jesus said that it was wrong to test God. In other words, God’s promises aren’t a license to do stupid stuff or to try His patience.

God guides the medical profession in finding cures and treatments. While this year's flu virus is not of the same strain as researchers had anticipated for this flu season, it still can be helpful and will remain in our bodies for future flu seasons when a different strain returns.

You wouldn't drive without fastening your seat belt.

You wouldn't play football without a helmet.

You wouldn't drive at 90 on a mountainous hairpin curve with a posted speed limit of 10.

Don't expect God to clean up your messes when you make dumb decisions. Testing God isn't proof of faith, but of a religious superstition inconsistent with Christian faith.

Please, if you haven’t gotten a flu shot, do so.

And, Gloria and Kenneth, please shut up. Enroll in a good Bible study program where you might pick up on the truth. You harm the Church's witness for the God we know in Jesus Christ every time you open your mouths.

More on my quest to lose weight and be healthy

I wrote here about beginning a quest to shed pounds that started after a recent appointment with my cardiologist. During that appointment, I weighed in 189.7 pounds, the heaviest I'd ever been!

That was on June 13. On June 14, I put myself on a diet, counting my calories. By July 26, I'd gotten down to 181.2, not a dramatic loss, but one that made me happy.

I don't keep scales around the house and I've decided keep it that way. I don't want to get caught up in weighing myself each day.

My focus is more on changing how I think of and use food, adopting a healthier mindset, diet, and body. So, I'm using a grocery store in Columbus that I visit occasionally, Marc's, where there's a huge, old-fashioned scale setting next to the exit, for occasional weigh-ins.

I hadn't gone to Marc's for a while. But on Thursday, I had a wonderful (and filling) meal with our daughter at my favorite Columbus-area Mexican restaurant, Cuco's Taqueria. Cuco's is close to Marc's. I'd been thinking of stopping by to pick up a few items. (They have great prices!) But as I stuffed myself, I told my daughter, "Maybe I should wait until another time to weigh in at Marc's."

In the end, I decided to bite the bullet. But I was wary, convinced that a few pounds had crept back on. A recent six-day trip to California for a church conference, when I wasn't preparing my own meals, and two other days of overindulgence, convinced me that the scales were going to deliver a bad message.

My daughter tried to console me (pre-console me?) as I prepared to step onto the scales: "Remember, dad, that you just had a big meal." I gritted my teeth, stood on the scales, and hesitantly looked up.

"Oh!" my daughter said, seeing the number before I did.

The scales showed that I now weighed 176.5 pounds. While I would have preferred making more progress than that, I definitely feel that I'm moving in the right direction and I was thankful that my eight days of less controlled eating hadn't done more damage!

In that earlier post, I talked about some of the things I'd learned after little more than a month of controlling my calories. As I continue this journey, I'll share more of what I'm learning. But for now, I'll just say that this whole business is important to me as a way of thanking God for the body that He's given to me.

I also hope that these periodic progress reports (at least, I hope and pray that they'll be progress reports) will encourage others as they deal with seemingly intractable issues in their own lives.

I will tell you this though. The single most important element in helping me to get this far has been prayer. Every time I'm tempted to eat more than I need to eat, I ask God to help me, to divert my attention to other, more productive things.

God is in this struggle with me; if He wasn't, I couldn't have made any progress.

He can be with you in your struggles, big and small, too. Just call out to God in the name of Jesus...He will hear you! Latch onto this promise from 1 John 5:14:

This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

And don't think that calling on God is a "good luck charm." That wouldn't be faith, but superstition. So, even with God's constant help, it hasn't been easy implementing a new way of life. It involves daily crucifying the sinful, self-indulgent me that likes, literally as well as figuratively, to have my cake and eat it too. (Though I don't really like cake very much.) I realize that I've wanted to eat big and be small. It doesn't work that way.

I've had to reckon with the fact that there are consequences to the bad choices we make in life, some of them eternal, though God's grace, offered in Christ, can reach us in any and all circumstances.

I'm convinced that issues like overeating and materialism are, in fact, among the greatest spiritual issues we face in the modern West.  Our craving for more and our acquisition and eating of more are, simply, sins in which we take far more than the daily bread we need. Behavior like that can wreck our bodies and destroy our souls.

I'm learning that as I crucify sinful desires and sinful habits, a new me is taking shape, measurable not only in fewer pounds, but also in greater peace with God, with myself, and with others.

This shouldn't surprise me. Crucifixion and resurrection constitute the daily pattern of Christian discipleship, even when it comes to what we do with the bodies God has given to us.

God bless!

Should the 2016 Rio Olympics Be Scrubbed?

A member of the medicine and law faculties of the University of Ottawa, writing for the Harvard Public Health Review, says the Rio Olympics should be "postponed, moved, or both, as a precautionary concession," giving five reasons.

1. "Rio de Janeiro is more affected by Zika than anyone expected, rendering earlier assumptions of safety obsolete."

Rio de Janeiro’s suspected Zika cases are the highest of any state in in Brazil (26,000), and its Zika incidence rate is the fourth worst (157 per 100,000). Or in other words: according to the Brazil’s official data, Rio is not on the fringes of the outbreak, but inside its heart.

2. "...although Zika virus was discovered nearly seventy years ago, the viral strain that recently entered Brazil is clearly new, different, and vastly more dangerous than 'old' Zika."

Phylogenetic mapping demonstrates that this particular virus arrived in Brazil from French Polynesia in 2013. Although the danger went unnoticed in French Polynesia at first, retrospective analyses now show that the risk of microcephaly increased by 23 to 53 fold.

Later studies from Brazil now powerfully argue that the relationship is truly causal.

3. "...while Brazil’s Zika inevitably will spread globally — given enough time, viruses always do — it helps nobody to speed that up."

In particular, it cannot possibly help when an estimated 500,000 foreign tourists flock into Rio for the Games, potentially becoming infected, and returning to their homes where both local Aedes mosquitoes and sexual transmission can establish new outbreaks.

4. "...when (not if) the Games speed up Zika’s spread, the already-urgent job of inventing new technologies to stop it becomes harder."

5. "...proceeding with the Games violates what the Olympics stand for."

The International Olympic Committee writes that “Olympism seeks to create … social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles”.  But how socially responsible or ethical is it to spread disease?  Sports fans who are wealthy enough to visit Rio’s Games choose Zika’s risks for themselves, but when some of them return home infected, their fellow citizens bear the risk too—meaning that the upside is for the elite, but the downside is for the masses.

In the build-up to the games, we hear all manner of assurances about the healthfulness and safety of the Rio venues. (Although I don't think I'd want to participate in any of the water events.) But Attaran's points raise a whole added dimension of concern over the advisability of Rio as a venue for the Olympics and Paralympics.

But big money--both that spent, committed, and anticipated--will likely leave these concerns, warranted or not, unheeded and not discussed.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio.]

"If Either of Your Parents Smoked, Go and Get Your Heart Checked Out"

That's the ominous headline from TIME.

My father smoked Camels when I was a kid. One grandfather smoked Winstons. The other grandfather preferred stogies. I was around my dad and grandfather #1 all the time as a kid.

Additionally, I often was taken along with my dad and grandfather when they bowled, where I learned how to keep score. (This now being an entirely useless skill.) There usually was cigarette smoke wafting into my face throughout these evenings out. So, I got exposed to lots of second-hand smoke.

Except for a few cigarettes and Tiparillos (don't ask me to explain), I never smoked, one of the big risk factors for heart attacks.

Until recently, I've never been overweight. And I have tried always to exercise regularly and eat right. I also had no relevant family bad heart history.

Yet, in 2010, I had a major heart attack. My cardiologist says it had nothing to do with stress, but with a chunk of plaque that lodged the wrong way, creating a 100% blockage in left anterior descending artery. Fortunately, I was otherwise healthy enough that collateral arteries took up the slack and I wasn't killed by a blockage that the cardiologists graphically refer to as "the widow maker."

My cardiologist calls my heart attack, which resulted in the loss of 40% of my heart and the installation of a stent and later, a pacemaker/defibrillator, "a fluke."

That may be. But I can only refer to my survival as a miracle.

This article from TIME makes me wonder if the heart attack wasn't a delayed response to secondhand smoke to which I was exposed in childhood.

We'll never know this side of heaven, of course. But I think the headline gives good advice to those exposed to secondhand smoke: Get your heart checked.

How Long Will You Live? SRT May Give an Indication

See here.

7 Deadly Things

These seven things, which The Week has identified from scientific research reported in 2014, will either kill us or make us sick:

• Too much sugar
• Artificial sweeteners
• Smoking pot
• Being a pop star
• Playing football
• Having too little Vitamin D
• Being in an unhappy marriage

No surprises here, I suppose.

Read the whole thing. (It's short.)

Should You Eat Gluten-Free Bread?

Even if, like me, you have Celiac Disease? Five experts asked by TIME magazine say no. Their reasoning is sound. (Thanks to halehawk for sharing this article with me.)

Aging, Contributing, and the Importance of Now

Mark D. Roberts blogs about a study by a Harvard psychologist and a 2012 BBC TV special which, decades later, attempted to replicate. Roberts cites a lengthy and interesting article from The New York Times.

The original study was done by Ellen Langer back in 1981. The gist of it was that Langer welcomed eight men, then in their 70s, to a monastery in New Hampshire. Langer, in a time before the connection between mental and physical health was less well understood, predicted that in five days' immersion into a life in this place, objective empirical measures would show them to be in better physical health. The Times article says:

The subjects were in good health, but aging had left its mark. “This was before 75 was the new 55,” says Langer, who is 67 and the longest-serving professor of psychology at Harvard. Before arriving, the men were assessed on such measures as dexterity, grip strength, flexibility, hearing and vision, memory and cognition — probably the closest things the gerontologists of the time could come to the testable biomarkers of age. Langer predicted the numbers would be quite different after five days, when the subjects emerged from what was to be a fairly intense psychological intervention.

In the New Hampshire house, the men were surrounded by the music, television, magazines, books, and movies that would have been current twenty-five years earlier, in 1959, when they would have been younger and healthier. On arrival, they were told that no one would take their luggage to their rooms. They would have to do so, even, as the article has it, if that meant they took up articles of clothing one piece at a time.

“We have good reason to believe that if you are successful at this,” Langer told the men, “you will feel as you did in 1959.”...

At the end of their stay, the men were tested. On several measures, they outperformed a control group that came earlier to the monastery but didn’t imagine themselves back into the skin of their younger selves, though they were encouraged to reminisce. They were suppler, showed greater manual dexterity and sat taller — just as Langer had guessed. Perhaps most improbable, their sight improved. Independent judges said they looked younger. The experimental subjects, Langer told me, had “put their mind in an earlier time,” and their bodies went along for the ride.

The results were, as Langer says, almost too good to be true. She shied away from writing much about it in scholarly journals, fearing her colleagues would automatically dismiss the whole thing as too fanciful.

...she and her students would write up the experiment for a chapter in a book for Oxford University Press called “Higher Stages of Human Development,” they left out a lot of the tantalizing color — like the spontaneous touch-football game that erupted between heretofore creaky seniors as they waited for the bus back to Cambridge...

As I say, in 2012, the BBC produced a short series in which the producers essentially replicated Langer's study with a group of older British celebrities, achieving similar results.

All of this is highly suggestive, of course.

How much of the aging process is about simply disengaging from life, exchanging the joys and challenges of the daily struggle for the alluring and often deadening perks of senior citizen status?

Frankly, as a pastor, I have seen people age well and others do so waving a white flag of surrender and entitlement...and early graves. Those who desire to contribute have seem to be the ones who remain young and vibrant, while their peers seem to age overnight.

So, I think there's a lot to this whole mind-body connection.

But there is something that disturbs me about Langer's approach. She achieved positive results in the health of those who disengaged from the world and immersed themselves in one that no longer existed. Is nostalgia the key to making people experience sustained good health?

I hope not, because nostalgia is bad history, for one thing, and, more importantly, it hardly empowers seniors to make the kinds of contributions that are only possible, I think, for those who live fully in the only moments we can inhabit at any given time, the moments we call now.

Could This Be Part of the Cure for Obesity?

The Washington Post reports on a study done at Johns Hopkins University in which researchers posted signs at grocery stores about the effects of sugary drinks on their bodies. The most effective of the signs asked, “Did you know that working off a bottle of soda or fruit juice takes about 5 miles of walking?"

The article says:

Results published online Oct. 16 in the American Journal of Public Health showed teens chose healthier options, bought lower calorie drinks or opted for a smaller size of the sugary beverage after seeing the signs.

The impact was lasting. The teens continued to make healthy choices during the six weeks purchases were monitored after the signs were removed.

Read the whole thing. And get a drink of water!

T-Cell Therapy Apparently Successful in Bringing Remission to Some Leukemia Patients

Praying that this new therapy proves successful.

"All the diseases you should worry about at least as much as Ebola"

Here. Compared to other public health threats, Ebola is relatively minor, though admittedly a stubborn virus.

Love this advice:

If you are worried about contracting Ebola, there are two things you need to do:

1) Stay away from people with Ebola.

2) Keep doing No. 1.

Pretty simple, really.

Be sure to check out the charts here.

"Good Mood Helps Boost Brain Power in Older Adults"

Be good to your brain: Cultivate a good mood by loving your neighbor. Research conducted by folks from The Ohio State University, the University of Michigan, Cornell University, and Linköping University (Sweden) seems to point to that conclusion.

No surprises here. We are engineered by God to operate optimally when we love God and love others:

When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:34-40)

Pop Consumption Down, Coffee Consumption Up Among College Students

Someone asked me how I ever got ordained as a Lutheran pastor in light of the fact that I don't drink coffee. Coffee-drinking seems endemic to my clergy of my tradition.

And, it's not as though coffee-abstinence is a family thing, either. My Dad is a four-cups-as-soon-as-he-wakes-up guy. He and my mum still enjoy their caffeinated coffee around the clock. All my siblings drink coffee. My wife likes her coffee. And both of our kids are now baristas.

But honestly, the smell of coffee almost makes me sick to my stomach.

Despite all of that, I like coffee shops. I enjoy their atmospheres, the quiet conversation they foster. And I get jazzed, as I sit there drinking an orange juice or a water, that the person at the next table working with such dedication on her keyboard might be writing a best-seller. It almost makes me wish I liked coffee. But my taste buds rebel.

Here's an NPR story on the rising popularity of coffee over against soft drinks among young people, the link to which was sent to me by one of our baristas. Getting rid of carbonation and sugar is no doubt a great thing, but as this report indicates, coffee isn't a harmless addiction either.

"Can You Limit Your Sitting and Sleeping to Just 23-1/2 Hours a Day?"

That's the question Dr. Mike Evans asks at the end of this 9-1/2 minute video which, in a compelling, fun, and content-rich format, gives us all plenty of "food" for thought. And it may incite us to get off our duffs to walk for a half-hour a day.

Watching the video is required for members of the insurance plan to which clergy who wish to get some health discounts. (Good idea, huh?)

But I'd have watched the video anyway.

Watch it yourself: It really could change your life!

What a Steady Diet of Soft Drinks Will Do To You

What we in Ohio call "pop" isn't good for you. (Thanks to The News Diva for linking to this article.)

"Five Reasons to Make Walking Your Way of Getting in Shape"

That's the title of my latest post over at Associated Content from Yahoo! I hope that you find it helpful.

Geezer Ball? Hopefully, Some Day I'll Play Shirts and Skins Again

The men featured in this article from the Columbus Dispatch, play pick-up games during lunch hours at both the Columbus Athletic Club and the downtown YMCA. Most inspiring is a 76-year old who plays in spite of previous bypass and heart valve surgeries!

I'm 57 and, as some who read this blog know, I suffered from a heart attack that damaged 40% of my heart last summer. I subsequently received a stent inserted into a heart artery that had been 100% blocked.

My heart function is improving, no doubt because of four major factors: medication that is strengthening the heart and reducing cholesterol (although my HDL, the "bad cholesterol," was never that high); cardiac rehabilitation, which, after I "graduated," has been followed by continued regular exercise; being a stickler for a heart healthy diet; and becoming more regular about daily Bible reading and prayer. God helps me to be both more calm and more deeply certain of His presence, will, and love for me through this latter discipline, incorporating time spent in His Word and in reverent conversation with God.

(A high school classmate of Ann and mine reminded me today that among the most important things in dealing with a heart attack's aftermath is learning "not sweat the mall stuff, and in the end, it's all small stuff." Spending time in God's Word and in humble adoration, confession, supplication, and praise of the God made known to the world in Christ is the best way I know to heed that good advice!)

Earlier today, I enjoyed the routine which the cardiac rehab techs taught me to use at home on those days I don't go to the gym: stretching, life weight-lifting, and a 45-minute walk.

This is all helping me to get stronger.

So, dare I hope that one day, I might be able to regularly enjoy playing pick-up basketball games like the guys in the Dispatch story? I would love that!

And maybe, if I suddenly fall heir to an incredible amount of wackily-disposable income, I could do what a good friend of mine did last year about this time: Play with ex-Big Leaguers at the Cincinnati Reds Fantasy Camp in Arizona. Now, that would be über-cool!

Here's a slide show from The Dispatch of the "geezer" pick-up games: index

'Embrace Life'

This is a great PSA from the United Kingdom.

Christ Heals...But Why?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio today.]

Mark 1:29-39
Some people may hear the Gospel lesson for this morning and say, “That’s nice. Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law and others. Why doesn’t He heal people today?”

The answer, of course, is that He does.

In an October 25, 1999, article you can find online at The Archives of Internal Medicine, seven physicians, a hospital chaplain, a social worker, and a scholar, associated with leading hospitals from around the country, presented the findings of their research on the connection between intercessory prayer—intercessory prayer is prayer offered on behalf of others--and the recovery of coronary patients. The researchers set up what’s known as a “double blind” experiment on those recovering from heart problems. There were 990 patients in the study. Prayers were said for some of them. Prayers were not offered for the others. The doctors treating the patients didn’t know who was chosen to be prayed for and the subjects of the prayers didn’t know either. But a list of first names was given to people in local churches who prayed for those on the list each day. Neither the people doing the praying, nor the people being prayed for, nor the researchers knew who had been chosen to be the target of prayer. And what happened? Those for whom prayers were said recovered more quickly. As the researchers put it in the conclusion of their abstract, “This result suggests that prayer may be an effective adjunct to standard medical care.” (1)

Now, if this were an isolated study, it wouldn’t mean much. But in recent decades, literally hundreds of objective scientific studies, conducted at major hospitals and universities, have been done looking into the connection between things like faith, prayer, and worship attendance on the one hand and healing and health on the other. The results are stunning.

A few examples: A 1972 study of 91,909 people in Washington County, Maryland “found that those who attended church once or more a week had significantly lower death rates from…coronary-artery disease (50 percent reduction), emphysema (56 percent reduction), cirrhosis of the liver (74 percent reduction), suicide (53 percent reduction).” (2)

“A 1978 study of 355 men in Evans County, Georgia showed that those who attended church one or more times per week had significantly lower blood-pressure readings than individuals who attended church less often. The positive link between church attendance and lower blood pressure held up even if the church attenders were smokers!” (2)

Now, I know that I’m preaching to the choir here. Many of you in this sanctuary this morning would affirm that the God we know in Jesus Christ is still in the healing business. Certainly, God uses doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals to bring His healing. But, as study after study has confirmed, their efforts are enhanced by prayer. In my nearly twenty-five years as a pastor, I’ve learned that most health care professionals know this. One surgeon I met years ago made a point of asking when I would be joining the patient he was operating on for prayer before surgery. “I want to be there when you pray,” he told me. “And would you please pray for me, too?” I was happy to do that.

God is still in the healing business. In his book, The Faith Factor, Dr. Dale A. Matthews tells the true story of Barbara, who suffered from cancer. Barbara was in worship one Sunday at the Epicopal church she attended when the priest read the Gospel of Mark’s account of the woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years, but not wanting to call attention to herself, believed that if she touched the hem of Jesus’ garment as He passed, she would be healed. As Barbara prepared to go to the altar to receive Holy Communion, a thought crossed her mind: “I could be like her.”

She looked at her priest who was, she thought, “standing in” for Jesus as He presided over the Eucharist. “She decided that she would touch the priest’s robe when he gave her the communion wafer.” As Barbara tells it: “I touched his robe, and he couldn’t have known that I did, though he did know about my cancer. He did something in that moment that I had never seen him do before: he put down the paten with the communion wafers and came over to me; laying both hands on my head, he prayed for my healing.”

Barbara wasn’t healed instantly. But she knew that God was healing her. As she explains it, though at that point her healing wasn’t physical, her heart was healed. “I had complete trust in God and his love, something he knew I needed far more than any other kind of healing at the moment.”

Of course, you and I know that not every one for whom we pray is healed. And even more than that, as Pastor Mark Dahle, a Lutheran pastor with a ministry of healing at La Jolla Lutheran Church in San Diego, reminds us, we know that everybody for whom we pray will eventually die. We live in a fallen world. Death comes, as does suffering of all kinds. Faith in Jesus is no insurance policy against the reality of living in a dying world.

So, why did Jesus heal Simon’s mother-in-law and the others our Gospel lesson tells us He healed? Why does Jesus heal today?

We get at least one answer to that question from an interchange that happens between Simon and Jesus before the dawn, after Jesus has prayed.

It had been a busy Sabbath for Jesus. After worshiping and teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum—where, you’ll remember from last week’s Gospel lesson, He had cast out a demon--He’d gone to the house of Simon and Andrew for dinner, healed Simon’s mother-in-law, cured many who were sick, cast out more demons, and then before sun-up, prayed. While He was praying, Simon and the others hunted Jesus down. They clearly wanted Jesus to go back to the scene of so much triumph and success. Instead, Jesus tells them, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also. For that is what I came out to do.”

For Jesus, healing was never an end. It was only a means.

John’s Gospel constantly refers to Jesus’ healings and other miracles as signs. Signs point to something more significant, more meaningful than themselves. The miracles of Jesus point us to the simple, powerful fact that Jesus has power over life, death, suffering, disease, sin, the devil, our sinful selves, and every other one of our enemies.

What Jesus came to do during His time on earth was share a plain message, one that will change our lives forever if we let it. He says, “Turn from sin—repent—and trust in Me to give you life forever—fuller life today and totally new, restored life forever with God.”

Repent. Trust. That’s Jesus’ message in a nutshell. Its validity is underscored by HIs miracles, by His suffering death on our behalf, and by His resurrection.

Jesus once asked a rhetorical question. “What good is it,” He asked, “to gain the world and all its wealth, but lose your life?” Today’s lesson, I think, asks a similar question: “What good is it to have perfect health, but lose your eternal life?”

Jesus Christ heals. And the ultimate healing, the one that matters for all eternity, is the healing of our broken relationships with God, with others, and with our selves. The healing Christ brings to those who repent and believe in Him will be our joy for all eternity. It can also be our comfort, our strength, and our hope even now.

(1) I had heard of this research before. But I'm grateful to Father Andrew Greeley for pointing to it.

(2) These are cited in a book by Dr. Dale A. Matthews, here. Dr. Larry Dossey also has spent years cataloging scientific studies specifically showing the connection between prayer and healing. Both Matthews and Dossey are physicians.