Thought for the Day 05/05/21 - vaccination vanity

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'You do realise, you are going to die', said the cardiologist as I left my pacemaker clinic a few months back. 

Now, her comment came flying at me out of context and, I must say, it led to a nice chat, and that left me with a deeper consideration for what cardiologists during COVID have had to cope with. 

Of course, they've been under threat of infection themselves, but with an increaed workload caused by complications for patients resulting from COVID they've been busy people.

What interested me the most was that apparently they've been having to deal with patients who think that once they've had a pacemaker fitted, they won't die! I suppose when you've come through a health scare like that, you will cling to any sort of medical hope you can.

Similar levels of hope seem to have been getting placed in the roll-out of COVID vaccines ... as if 'the jab' makes you immune to mortality.

And yet ... already the most vaccinated country in the world (Indonesia) has had to hurriedly re-introduce lockdowns, and the UK Government is urgently considering how to 'tweak' a top-up dose of vaccines for the over-50s in the autumn because already new variant viruses are evading the vaccine.

Of course, vaccination in itself is probably the best innovation that's been made in the history of medicine, although public health measures have probably been more significant. But when it comes to confronting mortality, what with blood clots and everything else, we clearly can't put our hope and trust wholly in vaccines! 

It would be a complete vanity to do so.

We do have a tendency as humans to look anywhere and everywhere for a this-world salvation, when it's what comes next that we really want salvation for!

Yup ...

Our salvation must be out of this world

We know that life as we know it does end. (We don't like to look, but we have seen it happen.)

So what we really need is someone to pull us up off this burning deck of a life.

But to do that they'll need to drop their rope from somewhere that's not on this deck, from where they stand in a place of greater safety to rescue us to.

And that's what our Verse for the Day today is all about ... in fact that is the GLORY of the verse we are thinking of:

"the same Lord is Lord of all 

and richly blesses all who call on him, for, 

‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord 

will be saved.’"

                                                 Romans 10:13

Paul has been writing in this chapter about the core Christian teaching that there is no favouritism or dinstinction of persons with God, and that it is by ANYONE turning from sin and trusting Christ alone, that Christ's deliverance from death can be got hold of.

And then in our Verse for the Day Paul quotes the Old Testamet prophet Joel (Joel 2:32): 

"everyone who calls  on 

the name of the Lord will be saved;

for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
    there will be deliverance,
    as the Lord has said,
even among the survivors
    whom the Lord calls"

Deliverance

I suppose that's what COVID has got us all looking for, isn't it?

But what a tragedy it would be to get rescued from one sinking ship into an equally compromised boat with no hope of reaching dry land before it went under!

When Paul writes about (everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord being saved) he does so as one who himself has seen and met the death-defeating, glorified Jesus. The Jesus Who reached down from the safe place to the persecuting Paul on the Road to Damascus and clipped that blaspheming individual to His life line.

Oh yes. When Paul writes he writes as someone who knows the life-enhancing  truth of which he speaks.

The Point

This earthly life can be a very scary business ... largely because of where we know it ends.

There are many helps but no lasting deliverance to be found by hunting around within this sinking ship.

But there is one Who's solved the problem of mortality from outside the sinking system, who reaches down with His offered lifeline from a place of safety ... and His resurrection packs the punch that gives us confidence in it.

The Takeaway

In His goodness God has given us healthcare, public health measures and - yes - vaccines.

But let's not fall for the delusion these meet our need.

As the cardiologist reassured me, I will still die.

It was a helpful, good and timely reminder for me that the path to lasting confidence for eternity lies in the salvation of the resurrecting God.

And as Paul tells us in the Verse for the Day today, that God awaits any human's call ... waiting for us just one call away.