No Let Up

For the chronically ill and their loved ones there seems to be no let up. You dodge one bullet--a good blood test, or an infection beaten--and then there is more heavy fire, more fear, more hassle. It seems that it never ends. Endurance is hard to find; and despair looms large.

For the Christian, the long term (the world to come), may offer the only real hope.

Chronic Illness and Chronic Residence

One dimension of the suffering of chronic illness is being constrained to live in a location that makes one's illnesses worse. Because of a lack of money or the inability to find work elsewhere, many chronically ill people must live where the weather torments them.

For most folks, the weather is a matter small talk, but not of major concern (unless one is a farmer or similarly connected to land and weather). But if you suffer from chronic illness, a sudden weather change is dreaded and endured as a punishment unavoidable--unless you have hope of moving or taking a holiday.

But they cannot do that. Holidays are demanding in their own ways--ways that healthy people do not notice. Nor can they move to a healthy climate. They are imprisoned in two ways: in their sick bodies and in their inhospitable environment.

Let us lament this double incarceration.

Now and Later

God keeps all our tears in bottle. For the redeemed, the New Heavens and New Earth will be a place where God takes away every tear; the curse will be no more; and God's dwelling place will be with his people in a renewed universe.