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Themes: "Deceitfulness of Sin, Sin's Depravity Mary Ann Heath was an apparently healthy, 46-year old woman living in a quiet suburban area of Kansas. She enjoyed her life with her husband and two children, and felt things could not be going better for her. In March of 1986, she went to her doctor for a routine physical examination. The doctor questioned her thoroughly, and she mentioned to him that the only thing she noticed strange was that she frequently dropped things, and felt like she was tired. Just as a precaution, the doctor ran some tests and took some x-rays. To his, and to Mary Ann's surprise, the x-ray revealed a large, dark shadow behind the upper end of her breast bone. Her windpipe was severely constricted.
When the doctor asked Mrs. Heath about difficulty breathing, she said she had no trouble breathing at all, and that the only thing she had noticed was the fatigue. He told her about the large tumor, and said that her trachea was more than 75% constricted. She broke the news to her family and surgery to remove the growth was scheduled.
A few weeks later, Mary Ann's doctor removed a lump the size of an orange. The lump was benign, and had grown slowly, over a number of years, gradually compressing Mary Ann's trachea and inhibiting her breathing. Because the change was so gradual, Mary Ann had simply gotten used to not being able to breathe easily, and had never noticed anything wrong with her breathing. If you had asked her on that March day that she went to the doctor, she would have described herself as a perfectly healthy adult.
It was only after the growth was removed and she could breathe normally that Mary Ann realized how bad her breathing had been. At her first checkup following surgery, she greeted the doctor with the words, "I can breathe! I can breathe! I feel like a teenager again!."
How like sinners, who daily see the effects of sin in our own life and around us. We get so used to it that it doesn't seem all that bad. We don't even realize that God sees sin as a horrible disease that will forever bar us from being in heaven. He has a medical remedy for that disease. His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ is the cure for sin. He took all the punishment for sin on the cross, and all we have to do is accept that remedy. The biggest hurdle many sinners face is seeing themselves as sinners. Like Mary Ann, they think they are healthy and fine and that their good works will give them some merit in God's sight. How great their surprise is when they are saved and realize that they no longer carry the tremendous burden of sin that they have become so used to carry.
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Shelly McKenna
