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The Wolves

         The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came over me; I was overcome by distress and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the Lord: “Lord, save me!” (Psalm 116:3-4) 

Lupus is an autoimmune disease, meaning that it is a type of disease that causes your immune system to attack you. The name comes from the Latin term for the word “wolf.” It brings to mind the story told by a Cherokee to his son about his having two wolves fighting inside of him. One was good, and the other evil and the one that would win is the one the boy fed. I suspect we all recognize that we have both wolves, but what we may not realize is that the evil one is just as willing to attack and devour us as it is to have us to evil external things.

Last night was one of those nights. I fell asleep nicely enough, but at about 2:30, I woke thirsty. After that, if I slept at all, it was dozing. I’m trying to learn to spend such unwanted wakeful times in prayer, but those prayers tend to begin with “The Lord’s Prayer” and then plunge into “Lord, I need to sleep” and “Lord, I’m sinful, worthless piece of garbage.”

It didn’t help that my before-bed reading is about two forms of guilt. They go by several names and descriptions but basically, one is a guilt based on the fact that you’ve objectively done something that violates your moral code. The other is based on a more subjective and general idea that something is wrong with you – or perhaps everything about you is wrong. This means that there was not only something vaguely wrong with me and everything I am or do, but I knew that I was doing something wrong by feeding the wolf that was trying to devour me. I knew the answer had to do with feeding the good wolf. What I should have done was to get my Bible on CD out of my truck and listened to the Psalms until I fell asleep. That would have been far better than listening to myself.

All of that connects to today’s passage in this way. The cords of death, the anguish of the grave, distress, and sorrow can be recognition of actual guilt, or it can be spiritual lupus. And we not only need Jesus’ death and resurrection to save us from sin in an ultimate sense, we also need His Spirit to save us when we’ve been feeding the wrong wolf.

 

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