Ah…the spring…and stings!

With warm weather comes the beautiful season of blooming flowers, budding trees, grass becoming green…and…duh, duh…duh (notice drama building), stings!!

Being outside has issues, but we still love being outside as much as possible. But the stings of anything can cause havoc in our lives. We were walking down the street just the other day and a little bee of some kind decided to fly near my husband’s eye and sting the corner! He did swell up, and thankfully it wasn’t in the eye (although with all the wailing I thought it was, just kidding!)

Over the years we all have suffered stings. Once I received the wrath of a wasp and swelled to such a large size that the emergency room proved the only refuge. Which later caused the need for an emergency epi pin to relieve any further sting damage in the future world of stinging. The pin should not have been prescribed for me I later learned from an allergy specialist, but it had been. So when I was stung by a very large, unhappy wasp which had gotten in my way, I used the pin. Bad choice. My heart raced uncontrollably and it did nothing for the swelling of the sting. It just caused heart issues. Not good.

My husband’s hand tripled in size one summer and he continued to deliver packages on his job. He had to have help just picking the packages up, and we won’t even talk about how hard it was to drive! Needless to say, stings are not pleasant experiences, as many of you well know.

The word “sting” translates to a word that means: “a sting, as that of bees, scorpions, locusts. Since animals wound by their sting and even cause death, Paul attributes death, personified as a sting, i.e. a deadly weapon”

I Corinthians 15:56-57 says this: “The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Sin” translates to “Hamartia” which means “missing the true end and scope of out lives, which is God.” STAY WITH ME.

Therefore, the thing of venom or poison is our eternal missing the true end and scope of our lives, God. When we miss God, when we miss that intimate relationship with Jesus, we we don’t know him as Lord and Savior, we know the sting of death. That pain, that spreading of poison! Eternity not spent with God.

The power and strength of that “missing the true scope of our lives….God” is the law! In other words, the sting of that wasp only had power over us if throughout that we had to do a certain amount of actions in a certain way…and only that way to bring us relief. Medicine, cool compresses gave us relief or victory over the sting by removing the poison. Just as Jesus gives us the victory over death and its sting! The shot I gave myself was the “law” that I was told I had to do..and it was wrong. It brought me more problems with the racing heart. The “law” did not relieve my sting.

Only Jesus Christ can give us that victory. There is no “law” that can bring us that peace. There are not a set of rules and regulations that will give us peace over that sin if we approach it in the manner of the law. A wise friend once told me: “The law commands your flesh to work and then it condemns everything it does.” We cannot do enough to rid us of that sting of death…but Jesus death on the cross bore that sing of death so that we might have victory over it.

Romans 10:4 says “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.“

Those wasps have no power over my husband and I! We had the victory through the meds and treatment to avoid the death of the sting. We are sometimes at the wrong place at the wrong time…bad things do happen in our lives, but death has no sting for the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ!!

So as this spring shows its beautiful face, stay away from those stings…or at least know how to rid yourself of the poison!! Rely on what you know to be true. Remember through and in HIM we have victory!

Be blessed~

IN CHRIST ALONE

Isaiah 55:8-9

 *google image, NIV, Strong’s Concordance*