So, I am a special education teacher. My students have severe disabilities and medical needs. One of my students relies on a ventilator to breathe. Without the ventilator he cannot breathe on his own thus he cannot live. The ventilator connects to his trach by a tube. Sometimes this tube accidentally disconnects from his trach which causes an alarm to go off. Myself or another staff member must then go and reattach the tube so that he can have oxygen and be able to breathe. Other times this student will for one reason or another remove the tube on his own. Sometimes he wants attention and knows he will get it when the alarm goes off. Other times he is just being a little jerk. But what he does not fully understand is that without that tube, he will die. He will at times attempt to put the tube back on himself, but he is unable to do so, when the tube is off, he must rely on someone to reconnect him to save his life. This happens daily in our classroom.
I share this because this reminds me of what we as followers of Christ so often do. I view the ventilator and tube as Christ. Because we have Christ we have life. But without Christ we have death. We know that the ventilator is very important, that without it we are in some deep water. It is our lifeline and we know it. But yet we do not and cannot fully understand the consequences of not having the ventilator attached.
Sometimes our tube falls off on accident. Maybe we have been doing very well in life and because of that we have forgotten the importance of our relationship with Christ, and because of that it begins to fade without us knowing it. The tube falls off on accident. Or maybe life has been very chaotic and stressful, we do truly love The Lord but in the craziness of life we wander away. The tube falls off. But at some point an alarm sounds, we hear it, whether we pay attention to it or not is another story.
Sometimes we intentionally remove the tube for one reason or another. Maybe we are presented with a relationship that we want but is not in Christ, we chose that relationship even though we know it is not Christ centered. Or maybe we have addictions or struggles that we fail to conquer and we simply give into them whether drugs, alcohol, sex, what ever it is. Or maybe we just lose faith in Christ and decide we no longer want Him. The tube falls off. Alarms begin to sound.
When the tube falls off and the alarm sounds, just like I do for my student, God picks up the tube and offers it back to us. It probably does frustrate him just as my student frustrates me, but ultimately The Lord knows that we have to have that tube, Christ. And he will continually offer it to us, for without Christ we have nothing. That is Grace defined.
What are we doing to ensure our tube does not fall off, that we are connected to the ventilator that gives us life? When our tube falls off and we become disconnected, are we willing to ask God for that tube back?
Just a though I had.
With love,
Your boy Opher.
