Religion in Daily Life
By the Rev. Edward Chinn, D.Min.
Written 18 October 1999
 

Michael J. Fox entered show business with the television family sitcom
Family Ties. I spent New Year’s Day 1985 watching Fox in the movie Back to the Future. In November 1998, the star of the current TV show
Spin City told the public that he had Parkinson’s disease. The 38-year old actor had been hiding his disease since 1991. He had a “hidden hurt.” A poet wrote: “If every man’s internal care/Were written on his brow/How many would our pity share/Who have our envy now.” What an assortment of “hidden hurts” there are! There are physical ailments, griefs, betrayal by a friend, failures of various kinds, disappointments, wounds in our personal life, our family life, and our work life.

In ancient Israel, there was a man with a hidden hurt. He was a king, shut up inside his city’s walls by the enemy. As he walked along the walls, he heard a horrible story of cannibalism, for the people were starving. “Hearing this, the king tore his clothes in dismay, and the people whom were close to the wall could see that he was wearing sackcloth under his clothes” (2 Kings 6:30). Sackcloth was the symbol for mourning, regret, some hidden hurt. Until that moment, no one guess that the king, too, had a hidden hurt.

How can we deal with this universal fact of “hidden hurts?” We can change our attitude from seeing ourselves as victims to seeing ourselves as victorious survivors. We are all victorious survivors of some really tough hurts. Suppose you shift your attitude. Pastor and author Charles Swindoll has written these words: “We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it.”

Furthermore, we can believe in God’s healing purpose. Recently, at All Saints’ Church, we held our annual “Health Care Sunday” to emphasize that religion and medical care are two of many ways that God brings healing to human beings. The ancient word “salvation” means “healing.” The word “salvation” reminds us of the word “salve.” You put a salve on your skin to heal a rash. God is always at work to bring healing (salvation) to all human beings. As an early Christian wrote, “For the grace of God has dawned upon the world with healing for all mankind” (Titus 2:11,
NEB).

Cheers,

(The Rev.) Edward Chinn, D.Min.

Rector, All Saints’ Church

http://www.libertynet.org/~allsaint/