There’s something called the fight or flight response, which is also referred to as the response of your sympathetic nervous system. It’s a co-ordinated series of changes in your body that occur when you’re in a situation that requires you to either fight off an imminent danger or flee from the sight. As you can imagine, this series of changes leads to open your airways to allow more oxygen in to your body, it speeds up your heart rate and dilates you pupils so more light can get in, amongst many other things. Your body however cannot simply accommodate these changes without drawing from other parts of your body that aren’t crucial to this response. And so, while some organs in your body get more blood flow to increase their efficiency, other areas of your body – like your gut and your extremities, have their blood flow constricted.
Overall, I think it’s a pretty phenomenal example of how the body is meant to work cohesively as one.
Fantastic material I say!
If the body of Christ is suffering – I tend to believe we have a responsibility to attend to it. If I was walking in the forest and met a bear and my stomach was too selfish to give up some of its blood - I would become the bear’s dinner. It’s really that simple.
If our community, our body, is suffering. If it is not well. I think we are responsible. I don’t think we can sit around and do nothing. I don’t think we can simply look on them with sympathy and then go on with our lives. As Christmas approaches – I’ve begun to feel that our practice of suffocating our Christmas trees with lavish and extravagant gifts is foolishness. I think we need to become a people of sacrifice. A people of commitment. A people who recognize that, despite the decrees of our society, we are not our own. Our body and our lives are not ours to do with as we please. I mean, we can… and we often do. But I believe we have a responsibility to the rest of our body to offer what we have, to give according to our means and to pray without ceasing. Just as the body subconsciously adapts when a part of it is in need, so we need to consciously choose to recognize those who are in need, and seek out ways in which we might die – that they might live.
If you are reading this on your computer screen, you are a part of the we who have been given so much. And if we are not prepared to give sacrificially in this season of giving – then I daresay we never will be.
