Good Circulation
Daniel 5:23-24
There was once a man who woke up from a very deep sleep. He was startled by a sound he could not identify. It wasn’t real loud, but it was consistent.
Bang, bang, bang.
He was in such a deep sleep he wasn’t even sure where he was. At first he thought maybe there was some construction work going on somewhere nearby or maybe some type of forced air heating or air unit turning on and off. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew he didn’t like it.
He prayed a little prayer, “Lord, make it stop! Shut that thing off!” It didn’t stop. It kept up. Bang, bang, bang.
As the cobwebs cleared from his mind and he woke up a little more, he started noticing some things. He saw rails on the side of his bed. He could feel the pressure of an IV in his arm, and then he remembered he was in the hospital.
He also remembered that his doctor had told him that the artificial heart valve he was having implanted would likely sound awfully loud at first….Bang, bang, bang.
When he remembered all that, he lifted up another prayer, a second prayer that morning. His second prayer sounded something like this, “Lord cancel that request! Don’t make it stop!”
There was a reason Garth Brooks sang about thanking God for unanswered prayer.
It is a good thing God doesn’t always do everything we ask.
Our heart is one hard working muscle. It’s about the size of a fist.
Can I ask you to do something with me?
Lift your hand and make a fist. Release it and clinch it. Keep releasing and clinching your fist until I tell you to stop.
The heart beats about 60 or 70 times a minute, so roughly 4,000 times in an hour. If you are still clinching and releasing your fist, you can stop. But think about this – last night while you were asleep, thinking about how wonderful this service was going to be and all that, your heart beat somewhere in the neighborhood of 32,000 times with the same kind of action that makes your hand tired after about a minute. The heart is one hard working muscle. Over a period of a week, assuming you were engaged in some level of physical activity your heart beats more than a million times.
That is a lot and that is incredible isn’t it?
Here is a question. Have you ever gotten a bill for that?
I don’t know of any power company, electric, water, phone, that provides free service, but I’ve never received a bill for the beating of my heart.
I know when I go over to the thermostat at home and adjust the temperature I am going to receive a bill for the power I use.
What if God were to invoice us for the beating of our heart? Imagine a bill out in your mail box that says something like this:
Dear Customer,
Our records have determined that you are in arrears for the beating of your heart from the day it started beating until now. Pay the amount disclosed in this invoice or we are shutting off service.
I’ve never received a bill like that because God is a gracious and generous God. Every breathing, pulse beating second of our life is a gift from God
And that is just the gift of physical life. That is not to even mention the gift of eternal life we are offered through Jesus Christ.
This is the time of the year we think about stewardship and are reminded you can’t out give God.
I want to be careful with drawing imagery from the medical world because I’m not a doctor and we definitely have physicians and other medical professionals here at Bethlehem, but it’s pretty basic knowledge I think that if the valves and veins to our hearts get clogged we run into trouble. Have you heard of this? If they get too clogged, we can die.
Good circulation is essential to physical life.
But good circulation is also important to spiritual life.
If all we do is receive without giving, we get clogged up and that is not good.
We can become like King Belshazzar from our text today from the Book of Daniel. The dude had a problem.
All he wanted to do was to receive. Here is how Daniel puts it in v.23:
“You have praised the gods of silver and gold….which do not see or hear or know; but the God in whose power is your very breath (and heartbeat), and to whom belong all your ways, you have not honored.”
Daniel is one of the stranger books of the Bible and there are some pretty strange books in the Bible. It belongs to what scholars refer to as “apocalyptic literature.”
It uncovers things that are hidden. What we see uncovered in our text today and that Daniel made clear to King Belshazzar is that our lives, our heartbeats our breath, our ability to form friendships and appreciate beauty are all gifts from a loving God and it is a shame to neglect honoring the God who gives us those gifts.
It is a shame to miss the importance of good circulation.
Which is why we are looking at some things in our current stewardship series. Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to have opportunities to practice good spiritual circulation.
Next week, Jim Melrose is going to be here to talk about our financial pledges to the church. We will also be sending out pledge cards in the next couple of weeks.
The pledge cards will enable us to indicate our estimate of financial support for the church But also, in following our membership vows, provide a way for us to record our support of the church by our prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness. On November 5th during our rice and beans project, we will have booths set up to promote some of our mission programs and projects and sign up to be involved.
Our heart is a hard working muscle, but without good circulation it can’t stay healthy. And while our hearts have been made new through the grace of Jesus who loves us and gave himself for us, if, like King Belshazzar, all we do is receive we are not going to stay healthy long. Good circulation is essential for a healthy spiritual life. So, I don’t apologize for asking you to honor your membership vows and invest in your church, because good circulation is essential to live life to its fullest.