Spiritual Gout....

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our
sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1John 1:9

Today is my birthday and I woke up with the gout. Do you see the irony in this? For the last two days I have been wrestling through the concept of "walking" in truth....and I wake up this morning unable to walk (sort of). It was just a moderate sharp pain in the joint of my big toe on my left foot. By noon, I had to leave work....unbearable pain....I had to get my shoe and sock off before it became impossible to do so. If you have never had the great displeasure of experiencing gout, it's kind of like someone taking a 20 pound sledge hammer and smashing your big toe. The pain does not subside, it is constant. Nothing really makes the acute pain go away other than these really tiny pills; the ones that I am unable at the moment to pick up from the pharmacy and will have to wait for my wife to pick up after she gets off works in quite a few hours from now.

Well, with all this talk, I am not really looking for sympathy. People experience physical pain all of the time a whole lot worse than my short-lived (hopefully) and temporary plight. However, I do think that it is a great illustration of how something so small and unseen can completely debilitate. With gout, apparently some sort of small crystals form in the joint. In our spiritual lives, this is sin. Often unseen, yet has a great propensity for debilitating our walk with Christ. Experiencing spiritual gout? The small pill is confession.