Ouch!

About a month ago (two days before Valentine's Day, to be precise), I woke up and did some light stretching in bed. My neck popped (as it frequently does), then suddenly the very top vertebrae popped. Instantly, pain flooded the right side of my neck and head. I could feel at the extremities, but the pain was so severe that I couldn't sit up. I lay there and called for my husband. For the next 4 days, I suffered varying degrees of pain and had to be on painkillers and muscle relaxers, as well as a cortisone shot. Even today, 5 weeks later, I have to be very gentle with my neck and while I am not hurting, I can tell that pain lingers around the corner, ready to pounce if I make a wrong move.

Why do I mention this now, 5 weeks after the fact? Because in the depth of my pain, God taught me some things about His body ... the church ... and about my role in that body.

First, He spoke to me almost immediately about the importance of a support role. Honestly, I took my neck for granted before this episode. I didn't realize that my neck muscles play a role in typing, or opening the bathroom door, or tying my shoelaces. But when I was in severe pain, all those things hurt. I could feel my neck muscles in literally every movement.

Support roles in the church are like that. Sometimes in a support role (being a "sender"; making copies before church; taking kids for bathroom breaks in children's church; writing a blog) we feel unimportant ... and are sometimes taken for granted. After all, it's the evangelists and authors who are the "face" of modern western Christianity. But Paul in his wisdom prepared us for such a struggle and addressed the issue millennia ago:

On the contrary, those members that seem to be weaker are essential, and those members we consider less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our unpresentable members are clothed with dignity, but our presentable members do not need this. Instead, God has blended together the body, giving greater honor to the lesser member, so that there may be no division in the body, but the members may have mutual concern for one another. (1 Cor. 12:22-25)

Do those in support roles get overlooked, taken for granted, or given token recognition? You bet! And yet the lesson of my neck reminds me of the truth Paul taught ... the greater honor goes to 'the lesser member'. The one not visible. The one in the support role. The one who is the neck, whose absence would impact virtually every part of the body.

My sore neck also underscored the need to identify with persecuted believers. Truly, when one part of the body hurts, we all hurt. Paul and the author of Hebrews both addressed this issue:

If one member suffers, everyone suffers with it. If a member is honored, all rejoice with it. (1 Cor. 12:26, NET)

Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. (Heb. 13:3, ESV)

When my was neck hurt, I hurt all over! I thought about the persecuted church ... how distant they seem sometimes, and yet how true these verses are. The body of Christ is hurting when the church in the Middle East is nearing extinction ... when some believers recant rather than watch their children be raped ... when we sit in our comfortable churches and exalt the persecuted church rather than identify with them. When my neck was at its worst, I didn't glorify the pain for the lessons it was teaching me ... my whole body threw itself into compensating for the pain and helping me get through it.

So I'm healing now, but the tenderness keeps a fresh reminder of these lessons before me. May God use my pain to help you grasp a new understanding of His body today.