It's Sunday

I had a couple ideas for humorous blogs, but they'll just have to wait.

I spent last night under a sleeping bag--alternately hot and cold--with a fever, chills, a headache, and an ear ache. I kept wanting to get up and be productive and at the same time wanted to sleep for weeks. I would nod off for a while and wake up feeling better. As I finished waking up, I would realize that I was NOT better yet, rather that being partially asleep had prevented me from realizing how miserably sick I was. You've all been sick. You know the feeling.

Today is that after sickness feeling--feeling returned health and the accompanying lightened load that brings, along with knees and legs that still feel weak, a head that is clear, and a body that feels ready to go until I get moving and really demand something from it. Then the message gets sent: hey you're feeling better, just not THAT much better yet. Wait a day okay?

Thank goodness for a good immune system: Warning! Probable barrier failure (Whether surface, biological, chemical, or mechanical is unknown.) Histamine response? Raise body temperature? Check. Pain and misery functions to indicate problem to owner of body? Check. Adaptive Immune response? Check. Antigen specific Lymphocytes including B and T cells? Check. Twenty four hours later, the majority of the pathogen has been dispatched, and repair crews are left to put things back where they should be. By tomorrow, I'll feel fit as a fiddle, and no one would ever be able to tell by looking at me that I was sick on Saturday.

All this from a few tiny organisms (Okay, yeah I know that the 'organism' part is debatable if this whole thing was caused by a virus), too small to see that got past my immune system and started to use my body as a reproduction playground. If my immune system wasn't up to par, it would have been much worse. Most people recover just fine, but there are people who die from the common cold. Even short of death, most people I know don't want even the relatively minor pain and inconvenience usually associated with an infection.

I went to church this morning not knowing if I'd stay for all three hours, but quite determined to make it at least through my Sunday School Lesson. Church isn't all that strenuous, and I got better as the day has progressed.

Going to fast and testimony meeting in this state got me thinking. Our spiritual lives work the same way. The things that will make us spiritually ill can and usually do start out very small--too small to notice. Yet protection is available. There are things that can keep a spiritual infection from ever getting started. We have a barrier system. Because of the Light of Christ, we all know right from wrong. This can warn and protect us from spiritual pathogens.

Good spiritual hygiene can help in the maintenance and strengthening of this barrier. If I will turn my life over truly, and daily to the Lord, then he'll protect me from spiritual illness and even death. I can inoculate myself through daily prayer, scripture study, and obedience to the commandments. This will strengthen my appropriate immune response. Or I can ignore those things and intentionally contract and spread spiritual infection the same way I could refuse to ever wash my hands, brush my teeth, get proper rest, or get shots to help prevent physical illness.

If I will EXERCISE faith daily, obey and live worthily enough, I can be worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost which is a further layer of protection. I can make covenants that will strengthen my spiritual immune system even further. I especially need to evaluate these covenants regularly--to check up on my own spiritual health, and repent to make course corrections as needed. Finally, it helps to occasionally have a doctor check me out, because he has been trained to see things I might miss until they become problems big enough to cause great suffering or even death. So it is in spiritual things. God has given us the opportunity to have a spiritual check up through the temple recommend process. If I (or we) can have faith in Christ, and truly follow those things which he has commanded us to do, our spiritual immune system (Which starts with the light of Christ and continues through cleansing by the Holy Ghost and sanctification through the atonement.) will protect us from not only outside pathogens, but our own inborn faults as well.

Love you all,

dad