I got mad today. Not just the kind of mad that makes you slam your fist on a table and then it passes. This was mad like... like I want to get in the face of the person that I was mad at and say things that ought not be said. I came very close to doing that. I went so far as to check the parking garage to see if his car was in its spot or if he had left. I am happy to report that he had. Otherwise I'd be confessing more tonight than anger un-acted upon. My "internal monologue" has already been reported missing and I'm 100% certain I would have unloaded on him. This particular "somebody" is a doctor. He is a young doctor. He is arrogant. He is cocky. For some reason I think we both know that we feel antagonistic toward each other. Neither of us have ever mentioned it verbally. But when he looks at me it is a condescending look. When he looks at my wife he looks at her like a patient. When he looks at me he looks like he wants to make sure that I know that he is better than I am. And you know what... I don't respond very well to that. He likes to tell me that he has an inordinate amount of pastors coming to him for treatment. I play psychologist with that bit of information and wonder if he believes that HE has to fix God's people because... well, because God can't or won't. Or maybe because God isn't there to fix anything. Grant it, I'm projecting those thoughts upon him but it sure looks accurate from this vantage point. However, this bit of writing is not about the doctor. I cannot fix his problems though I believe them to be quite deeply rooted. You see, he is a specialist in the human body. I am a specialist in the human soul. I know when I am physically sick and... until recently... I went to him for help. But what happens when your soul is sick and you don't know it? Like an untreated body it becomes sicker and sicker until eventually it is beyond help. It begins dying a slow death. You cannot live long with an increasingly sick body. You can linger for decades with an increasingly sick soul. The odd thing is, many people are dying a slow death of the soul without even knowing that they HAVE a soul. Go figure.

But here is the deal. I know I have a soul. I know I AM a soul. I go to great lengths to take care of it and to nurture it. I feed my soul on the Word of God. I cultivate my soul by interacting with God through the practice of prayer. I try to keep my soul healthy by not allowing it to stagnate. This is done by making sure I am pouring good things out of my soul as well as taking good things in to my soul. That is called "service" or "ministry." I don't know how many words I speak to God during the typical day but I am quite sure that I speak more to Him than I do to any single, living, breathing, human person. Me and God. We talk. And yet... my soul gets sick. I let a smirking doctor get under my skin and I lose my cool. I think thoughts I should not think. I leave the doctors office on my "Hardley" and I say things into the helmet that I would be embarrased for anybody else to hear. (By the way, did you know that inside of my helmet with the face mask down, I am quite the singer? No joke. I have heard myself do everything from Louie Armstrong to The Beatles to George Beverly Shea. I don't know why other people don't notice. Maybe you should consider sitting in front of me next Sunday during our worship time and just listening.) Here I am, a doctor of the soul, and I am ill myself. This, to me, proves something. The world is a sick, sick, place. Evil is real, strong, and present. I am infected with it. I do not like it but it is true. So what am I to do? The bible says that when my heart condemns me that I should remember that God is greater than my heart. (I John 3: 20.) So I suppose I am sick. Very sick indeed. But God's antidote... grace... is stronger than my sickness.

Recently I went to see this doctor because I had a sore throat and other weird symptoms. I had left him last year when I was REALLY sick because he was only making me worse. I went hunting and found an awesome medical man in West St. Louis county. He's helped me survive some really tough times. But I have occasionally gone to "Dr. Disdain" for simple things because he is close. He didn't do any test or check beyond using a tongue depressor and a stethescope. He decided that was enough to diagnose strep thoat and pneumonia. I took his anti-biotics like a good little trooper. After two rounds of pills I was cured. I "used" him. I knew he would give me "The Look" but I decided that was better than driving 100 miles round-trip. I'm going to be driving from now on.

What is the lesson here? The lesson is that we both lose. I lose because "Dr. Disgust" is probably a good doctor who just gets rubbed the wrong way by me for some reason. Conflicting personalities. But I can always find a new doctor. And I have. "Dr. Disturbed" loses because I really, really, love people. And I would have been delighted to do for him what he did for me. I would have loved to introduce him to the medicine for His soul. My loss will cost me about a half a day when I have to see a doctor. His loss.... well, it scares me to thnk of what his loss could cost him. The business of the soul is a very, very, serious business. I pray that one of his other pastor-patients will have the spiritual stamina to do what I could not/did not do. Jesus came not to heal the well. They do not have need of healing. He came to heal the sick. How can you seek healing if you don't know you are sick? This one is bigger than I am. God is going to have to be God today. I struck out at the plate.