NUMB

As most of you know, I was in a pretty bad motorcycle accident a few years back.  After a lot of time and healing, I'm pretty much back to as normal as I can get (with me, normal is a relative term).  There are a few things that are lasting from the accident.  I have a few scars here and there to remind me of my exploits.  Also, I have a couple of places on my body where there is no feeling.  No pain...just, nothing.

Pretty weird to rub your fingers over an area of your body and feel them...then suddenly, nothing.  Takes some getting used to.  But, it's been several years and, to be honest, it's still weird.

Numbness isn't normal.  It's a state many people actually seek out.  When the pain of life is too overwhelming, some people actually opt for numbness over reality.  They seek it through drugs or alcohol or some other addiction.  Call it what you like, it's just seeking emotional numbness above the reality of the emotional pain that it replaces.  It's addictive because it wears off, the pain's still there and we have to repeat the cycle all over again.  Therefore, addiction.

Another way that emotional, or even spiritual numbness happens is when we are overly stimulated in a particular area again and again.  Kind of like if you scraped a knife across an area of your body over and over, or burned a portion of your body again and again.  If so, the nerves would die and the pain would finally subside.  NUMB.

I think that happens to us on the emotional and spiritual level as well.  Maybe its an area of sin in our lives.  We sin...we get convicted...we feel pain...we confess...the pain goes away.  But, sometimes, we sin...we feel pain...we sin...we feel less pain..finally, we sin...we feel no pain.  In fact, we feel nothing.

Here's another example.  We see the world we live in and how far it's moved away from God and how it calls right, wrong and calls good, bad and it breaks our heart.  And we wake up the next day and it happens again.  And again...and again...and again...and, suddenly, without our even knowing it, we start to feel less pain over the condition of our world...and less pain...and finally, without even knowing it...without being able to pinpoint when it happened...things that bothered us don't bother us as much anymore.  Things that broke our heart don't break our heart any more.  Without even knowing it, we've become NUMB.

No one likes pain.  But beware...pain is better than NUMBNESS.  God designed us to feel, and when we get NUMB, we not only dismiss the pain, we also miss out on the joy.

May God's needle prick your heart today and restore whatever feeling has been lost.